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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23728264">Logan's Logical Guide to Political Rebellion</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumcat/pseuds/plumcat'>plumcat</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sanders Sides (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Found Family, Humor, M/M, Political Intrigue, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, magical hijinks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 06:01:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>38,989</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23728264</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumcat/pseuds/plumcat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Janus has never had an opinion of his own in his entire miserable life, and that's the way he likes it. On principle, what he stands for is directly proportional to what gives him the best shot at survival— And, well, he never expected that to entail joining an anti-government plot let by a tiny, angry, precocious teenager, but if nothing else he's good at rolling with the punches.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders/Deceit Sanders</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>71</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic is my baby and I'm super fucking excited abt it so I really, really hope you like it. It's gonna be a long one and a fun one. &lt;3</p><p>Content warnings for the overall fic: Physical violence, lots of cursing, morbid humor, &amp; sympathetic portrayals of all sides. Individual warnings will be posted on each chapter.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If you told Janus a year ago that one day in the disturbingly near future he would find himself flat on his stomach in the underbrush at three am with Fa— <em> Logic, </em> of all people, beside him, he would have not believed you, and also probably killed himself right then and there.</p><p>To add insult to injury, the burgundy jumper Heart had procured for him scratched in the underarms, and his slacks showed a full <em> inch </em> more ankle than would have been acceptable even in the early aughts. He thought longingly back to his dresser drawer, home to his few remaining crisp shirts and pleated linen trousers, his blue wool peacoat and snakeskin boots. He was glad he had a Logic-sanctioned reason to be concerned about the well-being of said clothing; Fear would’ve lampooned him within an inch of his life otherwise. And probably smeared him with mud to boot.</p><p>The back of his neck prickled uncomfortably. Try as he might, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. He hated the Plains. Everything was far too open. The world stretched out far around them before blending seamlessly into the black sky, so that it looked like they were not between two parallel layers of earth and sky but rather encased inside a sphere. The landscape was so blank he could see a dog taking a shit into a bomb crater that must’ve been half a mile off. A chill breeze wound its way down his spine. The angry, scarred earth did nothing to reduce his sense of foreboding.</p><p>There was that feeling again. He resisted the urge to crane his neck behind him. He knew what he would see—  More flat plains, pockmarked with craters and the grotesque corpses of what might’ve once been trees. The odd stodgy house, or ruins thereof. He started humming God Bless The Capitol under his breath, partly because it had been stuck in his head for the past half day, partly to be ironic, but Logic didn’t seem to find it very funny, if his glare was anything to go by. Janus shut right back up.</p><p>Despite himself, he wished they were back in Nolands. Sure, it was gross, and wet, and there were bugs everywhere, and the humidity committed terrible crimes on his hair, but at least the trees that surrounded you on all sides never leered weirdly or left you feeling un-present presences. They actually made a person feel kind of… safe. God damn it to hell, Janus was now the kind of person who needed to care about his own personal safety.</p><p>“I hate this,” he said, trying and failing not to whine.</p><p>“Hate it quietly, please,” said Logic testily.</p><p>Ahead of them, the main house of the estate loomed. Fear had gaped at it like a loser for a solid minute when they pulled up, and Janus had resisted the urge to point out that out here, someone could probably buy it out for less than one year of Janus’ university tuition. Though he had to admit, it was impressive— or at least, it looked like it had once been.</p><p>Its stately windows were half smashed, half boarded over with splintery wood planks. Tendrils of ivy cascaded over the front, obscuring what stonework hadn’t already been pummelled into submission by years and years of wind and rain. The stained white paint on the door moulding was peeling away to reveal bald lumber beneath. Judging from the way it shifted and creaked on its foundation like a geriatric patient trying in vain to get comfortable on a hospice cot, Janus wouldn’t be surprised if that thing had a serious case of black rot. The front garden, and the lawns in back, were overgrown by a rampant infestation of wild gorse. Deinantha’s trademark crinkled mauve leaves peeked out from gaps in the long-dead grass.</p><p>Still, it had that regal air to it of an old house, of old money. He could imagine what it would’ve been like in its prime. Coaches lined up outside, guests clad in shimmering silk dismounting for a dinner party. Perfectly trimmed grass and cultivated flowerbeds. The sculpture of the mermaid in the fountain out front would gleam and spew merrily, not sit there collecting moss. A sitting room, with plush red sofas. A library, maybe… </p><p>He must have looked daydreamy, because Logic knocked him with the side of his shoe and nodded towards the house. Janus sighed and refocused his energy on mindless staring. Privately, he felt that the watch was useless. A house that size would have at least three entrances, and these days, nobody in their right mind would use the enormous front door that Logic was resolutely keeping his gaze affixed on.</p><p>But he wasn’t going to be the one to put a pin in their plan. Not when that glint had finally returned to Logic’s eye. Besides, he rationalized, it was almost certainly deserted anyway, so it didn’t matter <em> which </em> bush they crouched in.</p><p>“How long has it been?” he asked, not bothering to whisper.</p><p>Logic checked his watch. “A little under an hour.”</p><p>It felt like it had been at least three hours, and Janus was about to petulantly say so, but just then, a rather humanoid shape bolted out from behind the building.</p><p>He squinted at it and started to say, “Is that Fear?” but then two more shapes appeared, following it, so he said, “Fuck,” instead and then Logic was on his feet and running and Janus was scrambling after him.</p><p>“I knew we should’ve watched the back entrance,” Janus hissed, silently cursing himself.</p><p>“Well, why the hell didn’t you say something?” Logic snapped.</p><p>Janus threw his hands up. “Does it look like anybody listens to me around here?”</p><p>Logic made an angry noise. They crossed the empty road to the manor at a sprint. Logic’s was a considerably faster sprint. The first figure, the unfamiliar one, was making a Northwest break for it, away from the house, trailed by Fear’s loping steps.</p><p>Janus looked at Logic’s hand, knuckles clenched tight around the hilt of his knife, and wished he had something to hold. He felt dumb and undefenseless wandering around empty handed, even though he knew that he had managed on less before. Still, a magique artefact would be nice. A rosary, maybe. Or a staff. </p><p>Better yet, a gun!</p><p>“I’ll cut them off,” Logic yelled. The stranger had made it past the garden gate and was now tearing across the lawn. If they made it to the highway on the West side of the mansion there was no point bothering after that. “You go around.”</p><p>“Go around where?” Janus yelled back, but obviously he got no answer. He kept running forward. It seemed like a reasonable choice. He reached the stone wall of the garden, hooked one foot into a crevice, and tumbled over it onto a nice patch of grass that turned out to be a pile of invisible pokeweed. Muttering obscenities and brushing non-corporeal barbs off his jumper, he jogged over to the gate and peered through the slats. It looked like Logic had indeed managed to intercept the stranger, who then made the fantastic strategic choice of a full 180 and was currently sprinting back whence they came, Logic on their heels. </p><p>Janus ducked out of sight, pressing his back flat against the wall and preemptively unlocking the gate. The sound of footsteps pounded against barren earth. The gate creaked as it swung open. Janus pounced.</p><p>He felt his body make contact with another body, and then the ground. There was some blind scuffling. His head whacked against something hard, possibly a tree root. He still had no clue who he was fighting with but he was getting fucking trounced. He might have a black eye after this. Fear was going to love it. </p><p>He glanced upward to see Logic just <em> standing </em> there, annoyingly calm but breathing hard. For a split second, as Janus rolled over onto his back for a friendly pummeling, he saw him not as Logic but as a scruffy teenage boy in a too-big coat and stained sneakers. Ah yes, their formidable leader and his fucking kitchen knife. It was all patently ridiculous, Janus realized, his life was terrible. Maybe he should accept his fate and lie there to be beat up so that at least <em> somebody </em> could have a nice, fulfilling morning.</p><p>He wrapped his arms around what he assumed was the body of his opponent, driving the top of his head into a chest, and used all his remaining energy to push off the ground with his feet and roll them over. They tumbled for a while, to the soundtrack of grunts and muffled curses. Janus hit a couple more things, and then they fell into a ditch and by some miracle, Janus ended up on top. Panting, he pushed his hair out of his eyes and examined his now-immoble opponent.</p><p>A young man glowered at him from underneath a messy curtain of dark hair, lips drawn into a snarl. His jaw muscle worked underneath a swathe of smooth skin, his jawline sharp as a dagger and highlighted slightly by the moonlight. It must be said. He was, objectively and extremely, attractive.</p><p>Holding him down, Janus managed to say, “<em> Lier </em>,” and then rolled out of the way as slim white ropes shot out of thin air and dragged and pinned the boy to the nearest solid object, which happened to be a misshapen topiary tree some eight feet away. No longer in any great hurry, Janus lay there on the ground for a moment before climbing to his feet and making his way over to the tree, rubbing his sore head. He was still covered in the pokey bits of invisible pokeweed. This jumper was done for. Oh, well, no great loss. He was a saint. They owed him for this. Well. Actually, more like he owed them one less.</p><p>Heart and Logic were watching as their captive kicked furiously against his bonds, his face a mask of unadulterated rage. Fear had disappeared, probably back into the house. The boy in the bonds looked very young. He couldn’t have been older than Janus himself.</p><p>“We’re not going to hurt you,” Heart said, holding out his hands. “I promise.” His open, kind face seemed to put the kid a little at ease, though he still eyed them all suspiciously.</p><p>“Swear on it,” he said.</p><p>“I promise,” Heart repeated.</p><p>“No,” said the boy. He spat into the dirt and jutted his chin at it. “<em> Swear </em>.”</p><p>“Kayda’s tits,” Janus groaned. “Heart, <em> don’t </em>.”</p><p>Heart ignored him and added his saliva onto the existing wet patch in the ground. Janus glanced over at Logic, who looked equally pained. Heart used his shoe to muddle the dirt into a larger, fainter splotch and said, “I swear by my gore and my sputum that no harm will come to you at the hands of me or my companions.”</p><p>It was an undignified little swear, but the boy seemed placated.</p><p>“Who are you,” Logic said, evidently tired of the pleasantries. It was not a question.</p><p>“My name is—”</p><p>“<em> NO </em>,” they all said together. Heart had dove several feet forward to clap a hand over his mouth. The boy blinked at them with wide, confused eyes and then licked Heart’s hand to get him to drop it, which he did with admirable good grace and only a minute grimace. </p><p>“Um. Okay,” he said cautiously. “What do you want to know then?”</p><p>Logic raised his left eyebrow ¼ of a millimeter at the prospect of an interrogation. Good god, he was positively exuberant. “Do you live here?”</p><p>“No. Passing through.”</p><p>“On your way to where?”</p><p>“Ahead of me.” The boy grinned at his own mediocre joke. Janus rolled his eyes.</p><p>“Do you travel alone?” Logic asked.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“What the hell are you doing <em> that </em> for?” Janus cut in. “Seems like a nice quick way to die.”</p><p>The boy flushed. “I hardly have anybody to wander around with,” he snapped. “And it’s none of your business, but I’m looking for somebody.”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>He didn’t say anything. Then, “Well, what about you lot?”</p><p>Heart frowned. “What about us?”</p><p>“What brings you to good old Edgepike Manor?”</p><p>“Provisions,” Logic said shortly. “Food. Matches. Et cetera.”</p><p>“This place has been deserted for ages,” their captive said thoughtfully, “There isn’t any food. Not any worth eating. And you know, a big house like this”— he gazed at them with wide, falsely-innocent eyes— “You seem like smart guys. I’m sure you guessed it's probably already been ransacked a couple times…” His eyes flashed. “You want other things. Things ordinary people wouldn’t.”</p><p>“Stop it,” Janus said, taking a step forward. “Stop it. You selfish brat. We can kill you right now.”</p><p>His smile was a high, pleased arch. “No. You can’t.”</p><p>“Deceit,” Heart said. A warning. Janus wasn’t listening.</p><p>He jabbed a finger into the center of the boy’s chest, just between two lengths of rope. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said in a low voice, anger and fear mingling into a knot in his stomach. “You will keep your mouth shut or I will shut it for you.” He tilted his head and smiled, plucking meaningfully on one of the ropes. “It’s actually quite interesting. Did you know there are all these funny loopholes in the legal definition of ‘harm’?”</p><p>The boy was shaking. His smooth brown face turned a patchy ruddy color on his high cheekbones and at the tips of his ears. “You don’t get to fucking tell me when to speak,” he said icily. The entire topiary tree was swaying as if in a strong wind. “You twee little spoiled, inbred, pri—”</p><p>The bush exploded in a huge cloud of leaves and splinters. Janus hit the floor instinctively, bending his head down to shield his eyes against the oncoming assault of flying twigs and hunks of wood. He felt bits of leaves rain down over him like a summer shower, and then it was still.</p><p>He peeked up warily after another couple seconds. His charm had disappeared in the chaos. The boy sat flat on his ass in the dirt, staring resolutely up at them. His chin was trembling, though whether from anger or upset it was difficult to say.</p><p>“Huh,” Janus said, standing up. “Not bad.” He grabbed the boy’s hand and pulled him to his feet, then shoved his back into his trouser pocket, turning back towards his compatriots for guidance. Heart had a funny expression on his face. Janus did not like the look of it.</p><p>“How old are you?” Heart asked.</p><p>Oh <em> no </em>. Logic’s eyes widened in horror. Janus was sure a similar expression was gracing his own face, but it was too late for either of them.</p><p>The boy shifted, making semicircles with his trainers in the dirt. “Eighteen.”</p><p>Heart turned to Logic with huge eyes. “He’s only eighteen.”</p><p>“<em> I’m </em> eighteen,” Janus pointed out sullenly. <em> He </em> had not received this kind of sympathy, and he had actually <em> asked </em> to join their merry band. New boy looked aggrieved by the prospect. Janus glared at him. He didn’t know how lucky he had it. There had been far more violence involved in Janus’ go round.</p><p>“Not even of age,” Heart said piteously. “And he’s clever.”</p><p>Janus was plenty clever.</p><p>Logic waffled. Janus huffed. This was ridiculous. Logic was barely older than Janus. <em> Barely </em>. And for all Heart liked to act parental, he himself couldn’t have been more than twenty-five or so.</p><p>“What’d I miss?” Fear’s voice said from directly behind Janus’ left ear. He jumped and turned around to glare at Fear, who grinned back without mirth.</p><p>“Poor little castaway blew up a tree and now Heart wants to adopt him,” Janus sniffed, unable to keep the scorn from his voice. He glanced at the bulging rucksacks that Fear was lugging with him. “Find anything?”</p><p>“Oh, tons of shit,” Fear said, “Most of it’s jackwagon, I expect, but we’ll have a look.”</p><p>Janus silently resigned himself to a tedious afternoon of picking through boxes of pins, testing batteries, and attempting to recoil massive swathes of rope. The grab-and-go extravaganza nature of their supplies missions left a lot to be desired, but one couldn’t exactly walk into a market and ask for industrial strength wire, now could one.</p><p>“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Logic said decisively. “We have all been outside for far too long. We are going in. We are going to go to sleep. Nobody will hex anybody.” He shot a pointed look at Janus, who refused to be cowed. He made a nasty face. “And we will engage in further discussions in the morning.” He turned on his heel and began striding toward the patio door as if expecting them all to follow. Heart did so obligingly. </p><p>Janus hung back a little. The boy was glancing at the garden wall as if contemplating whether he could hurdle it if taken at a run. Fear materialized behind him in that horrible way of his and clapped a hand on his shoulder. Janus was viciously pleased to see the boy jump half a foot in the air.</p><p>“Walk, dickhead,” Fear said cheerfully, leering in his ear.</p><p>They walked. </p><p>The back garden was in a truly horrible state. Any proper vegetation had been completely overtaken by weeds. They formed a thick quilt over the ground and had nearly managed to transform several decorative fountains into herbaceous mounds. If he didn’t know better, Janus would guess there was a growing spell on the place, but this wasn’t that kind of area. Among others, he spotted kendar, ulote, a thriving bush of bleeding sage, and heaps and heaps of the aforementioned wild gorse. Janus made a mental note to do a little picking before they left. It would be nice to be able to make some wards, if only against headaches.</p><p>They traipsed onto the patio, which looked like a pink-tiled island in a sea of plants, and through the sliding doors into a parlor. Inside, it wasn’t <em> not </em> nice. Nothing some cleaning wouldn’t fix. A slight breeze blew by outside, ruffling the plants. The whole house creaked. Make that some cleaning and possibly a new frame.</p><p>Heart announced he was going to put tea on and clattered off to find a kettle. Janus gratefully sank into a green high-backed armchair with its back to the fireplace. It was dead drafty in here. There were some logs already in, so all he had to do was lean over and cast an <em> enflammer </em>, and soon enough there was a fire crackling merrily. Logic took the second armchair and Fear steered their new arrival to the sofa. A puff of dust rose around them when they sat.</p><p>Janus looked around the room, assessing. They’d gone with a green and yellow color scheme, accented with mahogany, which was a tad gauche— especially in regards to those ruffled, moth-bitten curtains— but not overtly offensive.</p><p>Heart appeared in the doorway. “There’s no bloody hot water,” he said forlornly. Logic made half-hearted false noises of disappointment. Nobody else seemed to be in the mood for tea either, but Janus sensed the whole performance was more for Heart than the rest of them so he got up and did a little heating charm to start the kettle going. Heart brightened.</p><p>Seven minutes later, Heart somehow also produced five teacups with scottie dogs painted upon them and a tin of ginger biscuits. He set the whole affair up on the coffee table and stood back to admire his handiwork.</p><p>“It’s lovely,” Janus said, even though it wasn’t really, and poured himself a cup of tea.</p><p>Cautiously, the new boy leaned forward and took a biscuit. When nobody admonished him for it, he took another, and then stuffed them both into his mouth like a wild animal. Janus watched him in disgust and thought longingly back to proper afternoon teas in his parents’ drawing room. Cardamom cake. Fat blond scones with clotted cream. Mille-feuille. Much of Janus’ life now consisted of thinking longingly back.</p><p>He sighed and took a deep sip of weak tea. It’s not like he was ever permitted to partake of said sweets, but it made a nice memory, in theory.</p><p>“This is nice,” said Heart bracingly. He poured a cup of tea and dropped in a heaping spoonful of sugar, stirring it around until it dissolved. He handed the mug to New Boy, who chugged half of it in one go like it was water and not boiling hot leaf soup.</p><p>Fear held up a biscuit and broke it. It had a nice snap.</p><p>“So,” said New Boy to Janus, through a mouthful, “You’re a medechqir.” His distrust was clearly written across his pretty face.</p><p>Janus snorted. “So are you, mate, don’t look at me like that.” He folded his arms. “Also, that’s an outdated term and I take offense to it.”</p><p>He wrinkled his nose. “What, you fancy yourself an <em> illusionniste </em>?”</p><p>“And why shouldn’t I?” He had a terrible thought. “You’re not one of those who actually wants to be called a bloody <em> escroc </em>, are you?”</p><p>“I don’t want to be called anything,” he said, taking a second cup of tea offered to him by Heart. “I’m not a medechqir. Or illusionniste. Or crocodile whatever.”</p><p>Janus stared at him. “You exploded a fucking tree.”</p><p>“No I didn’t. I didn’t mean to.”</p><p>“It happened though,” Janus pressed. “I absolutely did not imagine that.” He looked around the room for support.</p><p>“I didn’t see it,” Fear offered unhelpfully. He seemed to have decided that he would only eat his biscuits if they were broken into eighths. Heart watched helplessly as he rained crumbs down onto the carpet.</p><p>“He didn’t see it,” repeated New Boy as if that was some kind of victory.</p><p>“That’s because he was <em> inside </em>,” Janus said, through gritted teeth. “Logic?”</p><p>Logic sighed heavily, as if already regretting being brought into this conversation. “That did in fact happen.”</p><p>New Boy opened his mouth as if to further argue, but Janus cut him off.</p><p>“Don’t bother. So you can do a little magique. None of us are gonna fight you over it.” He gestured to himself. “See, I’m alive.”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Fear, “We hate Deceit because he’s an asshole, not because he can do cleaning spells.”</p><p>Janus, mature adult that he was, stuck out his tongue at him.</p><p>New Boy shrugged. “Well, I’ve never been taught, so I didn’t think you would think it counted.”</p><p>“You did an explosion spell without any prior schooling,” Janus said skeptically.</p><p>New Boy perked up. “Is that impressive?”</p><p>When Janus was eleven it took him half a year to master a basic shattering spell. The most he could do was pop balloons with an <em> éclater </em>, whilst Nicole and Gil cheerfully destroyed ceramic practice urns. On his turn he would stand there, palms sweaty, and hold out a hand, and then he’d think of the glass breaking against the parlor wall and the incantation would die in his throat and his tutor would launch into a red-faced, spittle-flecked monologue about the softness of today’s youth.</p><p>“Not terribly,” he said. “Most kids can do them.”</p><p>“Was it even a spell, though?” Heart said thoughtfully. “He didn’t say anything.”</p><p>“Some people can do wordless spells,” Janus said. He was not one of them, though he wasn’t about to mention that part.</p><p>“It wasn’t a spell,” New Boy insisted. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I can’t do <em> proper </em> magic, it just… happens, sometimes.”</p><p>Janus frowned, but didn’t say anything more. He guessed that wasn’t unheard of, but it was still weird. He had gotten shoved into tutoring as soon as he started levitating soap bubbles in the bath as a toddler, but maybe things were different wherever New Boy was from.</p><p>New Boy took another sip of tea and yawned, unsuccessfully muffling it behind his hand.</p><p>“It’s almost five,” said Heart. “We should all sleep.”</p><p>“Alright,” said New Boy, standing up, “I’ve been sleeping in one of the upstairs bedrooms, so I’ll just be off there, goodnight all—”</p><p>“Nice try,” said Logic. “Everybody will stay down here.”</p><p>New Boy pouted. “Can I at least go get my stuff?”</p><p>“Deceit, go with him,” Logic instructed.</p><p>Janus and New Boy both groaned.</p><p>“Fiiine,” Janus whined, reluctantly sliding off his armchair. Logic and Heart got up as well, presumably to sort out their bedrolls. Fear had claimed the couch, kicking his legs across New Boy’s vacated seat and throwing his jacket over his head. He folded his hands over his chest and let out a contented sigh. He looked like a corpse. His breathing leveled out seconds later. Janus added this to his mental list of reasons why Fear was potentially not human. His working theory was a shapeshifting Spunnus Bat. Either that or the devil incarnate.</p><p>He followed New Boy out the door where Heart went to get tea earlier. It led to a dusty, dark hallway that opened up to a small kitchen, and to the left of the kitchen door was a flight of stairs running parallel to the wall. They tramped up the stairs, footsteps loudly creaking on the old floorboards. The low ceiling hovered over them, grazing the top of New Boy’s hair. Janus had to duck under a beam at the top and nearly got a mouthful of cobwebs. He was momentarily grateful for the narrowness of the stairwell. Since he was walking behind New Boy, only the spiders were there to bear witness to his undignified flailing.</p><p>New Boy ducked into the first room to the right and rudely let the door shut behind him. Janus ignored the unsubtle message and followed in after him, partly to prevent him from leaping out the window and making a break for it, but mostly out of curiosity. The room looked like it was probably once a child’s bedroom, done up in pale blue and white, with little silver stars decorating the ceiling. The bed in the center of the room was a jumbled mess of blankets. Its striped canopy had a long rip down the middle, the low-hanging tendrils grazing the top of Mount Duvet.</p><p>Janus wandered over to the desk, which was covered in a thick film of dust. He wrote his name in it with his finger, then guiltily realized that he was only Janus in private anymore, and used the flat of his hand to wipe it away. He tried to clean off his now disgusting hand with his trousers, which were equally grimy and just served to make everything about his current existence that much worse.</p><p>  He turned his attention back to New Boy to make sure he wasn’t doing anything dumb. He was standing by a dark oak chest of drawers, shoving its contents into a battered green kit bag. Janus gave him his privacy by refocusing on the desk. The surface was blank save for the aforementioned dust and a single photograph propped up against the wall. Experimentally, he pulled open the desk drawer. It was empty as well. New Boy had been right about the place already having been ransacked.</p><p>He picked up the photograph, squinting at it. It was a little faded, and creased down the middle, but despite that, two young boys beamed, unimpeded, up at him, arms looped around each other’s shoulders. They seemed to be brothers, with the same brown skin and dark unruly hair. The smaller one, with the missing tooth, was probably about eight or nine, and the other maybe fourteen.</p><p>“Don’t touch that,” said New Boy, who appeared next to him and snatched it away from Janus. He carefully folded it and tucked it into the front pocket of his jeans. He had his bag over one shoulder, and a blanket over the other arm.</p><p>“Sorry,” Janus said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t know it was yours.”</p><p>He shrugged. “Whatever. Let’s go.”</p><p>They retraced their steps from before, with the fortunate benefit that Janus was now prepared for the cobwebs. Back in the parlor, Logic and Heart had set out their sleeping bags on the carpet. Heart was doing his nightly meditation, which involved a lot of loud, rhythmic breathing, and Logic was placidly sharpening his knife. He jerked his chin towards an open door on the wall to his left. </p><p>“There’s a sitting room through there. Heart already put your stuff in.”</p><p>Janus thanked him and they went over. The pink-and-cerulean theme was Janus’ least favorite so far, but there were two couches, so he could almost forgive the owners for the huge, realistic painting of an anthropomorphic rabbit that hung over the mantle and gave them a disturbingly lustful side-eye. </p><p>As promised, Janus’ satchel had been placed on a couch, unfortunately the one closest to the rabbit. Heart, angel that he was, had spread out his sleeping bag and provided him with a pillow that seemed to have been taken from a yellow armchair across the room. Janus was too tired to take offense to the fact that it clashed horribly with the brownish purple of his sleeping bag. He flopped down onto the couch, ignoring its noise of complaint, and rolled over to watch New Boy spread out his blanket and smother his yawns.</p><p>It was not terribly riveting, and after a minute Janus’ curiosity got the better of him. “Who was the other boy in the photograph?”</p><p>“Nobody important,” said New Boy quickly. </p><p>“I don’t usually carry about photos of unimportant people, personally,” said Janus.</p><p>New Boy hesitated. “He’s… a friend.” He walked across the room to get a pillow from the second yellow armchair and fluffed it between his hands. “Someone I haven’t seen in a while, that’s all.”</p><p>“Is he the person you’re looking for?”</p><p>“Yeah,” New Boy admitted. He set his jaw, his face alight with a determination that was as charming as it was naive. “I’m going to save him.”</p><p>“So noble,” Janus drawled. “You’re a right fucking prince.” He brightened, snapping his fingers. “That’s it!” He got up and poked his head back through the doorway of the other room. “New boy is Prince.”</p><p>Heart cracked open one eye. “Ohh, I love it,” he chirped, and went back to his cleansing humming.</p><p>“Fits,” said Logic.</p><p>Fear snored a little.</p><p>“I am <em> not </em>,” said Prince hotly, but everybody ignored him.</p>
<hr/><p>“Heave ho,” said Fear with uncharacteristic good cheer, dumping Prince’s unconscious body into the backseat. The fighting and scheming of the past day had put him in a better mood than usual. Prince fell forward against the back of the driver’s seat, his limbs simultaneously dragging him off the seat and towards the floor of the car.</p><p>“Be careful!” Heart chided, rushing over to set him up properly. Despite the best efforts of both Heart and the seatbelt, he still listed forward, head lolling to the right.</p><p>“What did you do to him?” Janus asked.</p><p>Heart looked guilty. “Sleeping sugar in his tea.”</p><p>Fear clapped him on the back. “I always liked you,” he said, which didn’t seem to make Heart feel any better about himself.</p><p>Logic’s head emerged from underneath the open hood of the truck. There was a bit of oil on his cheek and he looked cross. “What are you lot standing around for?” He brandished a screwdriver at them. “Get moving!”</p><p>While Heart continued to try and fold Prince’s limbs into a position that wouldn’t destroy all his nerve endings, Fear and Janus walked around to the back of the truck to start loading everything in. It was a bright morning. The Plains were much less foreboding during the day, though the lack of trees allowed the sun to beat down on them relentlessly. The two of them worked together in silence, Janus passing various bags over to Fear, who then hauled them into the truck bed. Under Logic’s watchful eye, they had managed not to overpack for once, and the process went by quickly.</p><p>At last, Fear stepped back from the truck and smoothed a hand over the crown of his shaved head. A thin film of sweat glinted off his dark brown skin. “Logic!” he yelled.</p><p>Logic slammed the hood shut, wiping his greasy hands on his trousers, and the four of them reconvened next to the open left-hand door, within which Prince slumbered. </p><p>“Did you fix it?” said Heart.</p><p>“I think so,” Logic said. “If not we’ll find out soon enough. Let’s go. I want to be on the road before he wakes up.”</p><p>“Can I drive?” asked Fear, like he did every time.</p><p>“Absolutely not,” said Heart and Logic together, like they did every time.</p><p>They all piled in. It was a tighter squeeze than usual because of the extra body, and furthermore Janus’ usual seat had been given to Prince. He ended up squished between Heart and Logic on the front bench. Behind them, Fear stretched out beside their conked-out abductee and put his feet up on the back of the seat, right on either side of Janus’ head, because he was a terrible fucking person.</p><p>Heart drove, because he was the only one who could do so legally. Logic got radio privileges, because he had very specific taste and nobody wanted to argue with him. Janus got to sit there and suffer through Logic’s terrible music choices, which consisted largely of country rock, because the universe hated him.</p><p>Their little road trips were Janus’ least favorite part of his current life. It was always dead boring, and being cooped up made him antsy, and Logic got annoyed with him being antsy and from there it was usually straight downhill. Their shitty, cranky old truck clattered down the empty highway, guided by Heart, who bobbed his head along with the music and attempted to sing despite not knowing the words.</p><p>Janus watched the world go by outside the window for a while, but that was dull, because every mile looked exactly the same. When he felt himself getting excited by the sight of a fully upright tree, that was a sign there was something very wrong. He peeled a little bit of leather off the edge of the small bag on his lap, which was full of herbs and plant clippings he’d taken from the garden earlier that morning. He was itching to spread it all out and start fiddling, but from the way the truck was rattling he doubted he’d be able to keep his hands steady. Then, he shifted around until Logic elbowed him and told him to stop shifting around, and then he tried to go to sleep. He drifted in and out of a light, unrestful doze for a couple hours, and then was jerked back into consciousness by the sounds of scuffling in the back seat. He turned around to see Fear wrestling Prince’s seat belt back on.</p><p>“What the fuck?!” Prince was saying, thrashing. He got in a knock on Fear’s nose, who then hit him round the head with a satisfying smack. “Where am I?”</p><p>“Good morning, kiddo!” said Heart, as if he was Prince’s loving father rather than a random stranger who had personally knocked him out and stuffed him into a car. “Great news, you’re going to live with us for a while!”</p><p>“<em> WHAT </em>?!” Prince exploded. “You said we’d discuss it in the morning!” </p><p>“We did,” Logic pointed out, with all his trademark tact, “Just not with you.”</p><p>“Please don’t blow up the truck,” Janus said, eyeing Prince nervously. He was so red in the face Janus wouldn’t have been shocked if steam started pouring out of his ears.</p><p>“This is a kidnapping,” Prince announced, “It’s illegal and you all are a bunch of fucking wankers and I hate you.”</p><p>Fear laughed. “Buddy, this is like, the most legal thing we’ve done all week.”</p><p>“I don’t like this either,” Janus admitted, ignoring Fear. “We shouldn’t trust him. We don’t know where he’s from, or anything about him.”</p><p>“Great,” said Prince, “Then you can just let me off at the next town and you don’t have to worry about it ever again.”</p><p>“Great,” repeated Janus, “Let’s do that, please, Logic.”</p><p>“Unfortunately for all of us, that isn’t an option,” Logic said, over the dulcet tones of Lydie Jamb as she crooned about love being like a good greasy breakfast. “I would rather distrust you from within a visible distance.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Prince snarked. He folded his arms and scowled at Logic through the rearview mirror. “I have <em> things </em> to <em> do </em>,” he insisted. Janus remembered the photo on the desk and felt a twinge of sympathy, which was quickly drowned out by schadenfreude.</p><p>“And if you wait it out and don’t try to kill any of us, we can help you do them,” said Logic, logically. “But as of now, I apologize, but you don’t have a say in the matter.”</p><p>Prince huffed but didn’t argue further, opting instead to glare out the window and sigh loudly every thirty seconds. After about five minutes of this, he asked, “Where are we going, anyway?”</p><p>“Home,” said Heart, which was blatantly untrue.</p><p>“The Nolands,” clarified Janus. He caught Prince’s skeptical expression from his reflection in the dashboard. “I know. It’s awful, you’ll hate it.”</p><p>“Oh, shut up, Deceit, it’s not that bad,” Fear scoffed. “Don’t listen to him. He’s a spoiled baby.”</p><p>“Do you just...  live in the woods?”</p><p>“Don’t be stupid, there’s a house,” Janus said. If it was, say, a tent, Janus would not be there, because he would be dead, because he would rather die in an estate than live in a tent. The cottage was barely acceptable.</p><p>“What’s it like?”</p><p>“It’s lovely,” began Heart. “There’s a red roof—”</p><p>“Ughhh, don’t bother,” groaned Fear, clearly dreading the incoming explanation of the stonework. “He’ll see it soon enough.”</p><p>They fell into silence, punctuated by the sputtering of the engine as they trundled along. Genuine flora was beginning to appear along the side of the road, in patches, like a teenager’s patchy beard. Seeing colors other than brown and grey did wonders for Janus’ mood. There were more houses popping up as well, and closer together. On a patch of grass in front of a squat home with a thatched roof, a few children played a game of football. Their shrieks of laughter carried through the cracked-open window. A sign up ahead informed them that they would enter the Rivers District in less than a kilometer.</p><p>“How much longer?” asked Janus.</p><p>“About four more hours,” said Logic.</p><p>Prince groaned along with the rest of them. He was already fitting right in.</p>
<hr/><p>In what was actually four and a half more hours, five if you counted the trek from where Heart parked the truck, they arrived at the cottage. And not a moment too soon. A minute more of hiking, especially whilst lugging the rucksacks that Fear had foisted on him, and Janus’ arms and legs would fall clean off and Logic would be forced to drag his pitiful, limbless torso along the forest floor by the hair.</p><p>“Home sweet home!” Heart chirped, bounding up the front steps, his keys jangling in his hand. He fumbled with them for a moment, then pushed the door open, sighing in contentment as he stepped through. Though Janus wasn’t about to admit it, he was also glad to be back. Against his will, the pathetic little thing— its crumbling stone bricks, the plants climbing up the walls, the bent and rusted copper weathervane— and the marshy forest that surrounded it had become rather comforting and familiar.</p><p>He staggered inside, dumped the bags on the floor, and flung himself across the room and onto the couch, taking care to hang his feet and their muddy shoes off the edge, a safe distance from the floral fabric. “Leave me here to die,” he said, as the rest of them entered and set down their own bags. Unpacking was a problem for later.</p><p>“You’re a weak bitch,” Fear said, dropping the bag with Heart’s kitchenware onto his stomach.</p><p>Janus glanced over at Prince, curious as to what he thought about the cottage. His expression was neutral, but he kept looking around, his eyes flicking from the stack of books on the coffee table, to the fraying red rug, to the small kitchen that opened up behind them, to the hallway that stretched out against the left side of the room. It looked like a tasteless elderly couple’s holiday home, not a base for illegal activity, but Janus had recently begun to come to terms with the lack of aesthetic propensity in his new life. It might build character. Or kill him. A win either way.</p><p>Despite Prince’s only belongings being in his little kit bag, he had carried an extra suitcase without complaint. He deposited it on the top of the pile of luggage currently invading the floorspace in the living area, but kept his own bag with him.</p><p>Heart put an arm around his shoulders. “C’mon, kiddo, let’s take a tour. I’ll show you where you’re gonna sleep.”</p><p>“Wait a minute,” said Janus, sitting up, “There are only four beds.”</p><p>Logic made a hmm-ing noise. “I suppose one of us will have to sleep on the couch.”</p><p>Everybody looked at Janus.</p><p>“No,” he said. “No, no, <em> no. </em> This is inhumane.” Logic turned away and began unzipping his luggage. “I could hex you all right now!” Janus yelled at the retreating backs of Heart and Prince as the former dragged the latter towards the bedrooms.</p><p>Fear patted his head like one would a dog, except with so much force it would probably kill a dog. “I hope this destroys you,” he said.</p><p>Janus swatted him away and sprawled back onto his prison cot to bemoan what could only be karmic punishment from the universe. Janus’ lifelong hobby of being a horrible person had caught up to him at last. The reasonable thing to do would be to take this as a sign to grow into a more selfless human being, but that sounded like a fucking drag, so he he lay there uselessly and whined as Logic and Fear began the process of unpacking.</p><p>Heart and Prince didn’t reappear until almost everything was back in its usual places, save for the bags Fear had filled with debris from Edgepike Manor. They had been stuffed into the broom closet until anyone got the energy to do something about them. The two arrivals were giggling, which was a bad sign. </p><p>“I like it here,” Prince announced, which was clearly Heart’s fault.</p><p>“That’s good to hear,” said Logic absently. He was sitting on the floor in front of the bookshelf, squinting at the spine of a battered blue book as he attempted to figure out where it was meant to go. Janus didn’t envy him. Old Gragluin letters never stayed in the proper order for long.</p><p>“I’ve actually been thinking,” said Heart, taking a seat on the arm of the couch near Janus’ feet. “Deceit, maybe it would be nice if you could teach Prince a little magique.”</p><p>The grimace on Prince’s face matched Janus’ own lack of enthusiasm.</p><p>“He’s going to hex me,” Janus said peevishly. “And I won’t be able to defend myself, and I’ll die, and you lot will have to wash the dishes by hand.”</p><p>“Fine,” said Heart, “No hexes.”</p><p>“What else is the point of learning magique?” Prince groused. He sank into a chair and tucked his knees up to his chest.</p><p>“It’s still a bad idea,” Janus insisted, propping himself up with one elbow. “Right, Logic?”</p><p>“I think it’s an excellent idea,” said Logic, the traitor. He slid another book into an available spot with a <em> shhh-ing </em> noise as the leather jackets rubbed against each other. “It will be better for everybody if Prince can control his, ah, abilities.”</p><p>“Besides, it’d be useful to have another set of hands,” Fear cut in. “Deceit is shit at household spells.”</p><p>“I am <em> not </em>.” With Janus’ luck, Prince would be bloody brilliant at magical sock-darning.</p><p>“Then it’s settled,” Heart said, clapping his hands and springing to his feet, ignoring the twin dirty looks being thrown his way from either side of the room. Underneath that sunny exterior was the cruel fiendish heart of someone dedicated to ruining Janus’ already sad life. “I’ll get dinner started. Fear, come help.”</p><p>“Is there anything I can chop?” asked Fear, following at his heels like an oversized puppy.</p><p>Janus hazarded a peek at Prince. He was glaring at Janus as if this was somehow <em> his </em> fault. Janus made a face at him that meant, “This is going to suck as much for me as it is for you” and Prince squinted back a “I don’t care, I hate you.”</p><p>Janus sighed and got up to make sure Logic wasn’t misfiling any spell books. They would throw a fit, and Janus didn’t fancy getting his fingers bitten next time he wanted to read up on healing charms. He winced. After less than an hour, the couch had already given him a crick in his back.</p><p>The near future was shaping up to be unbelievably bleak.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Heart introduces a plan, Logic staves off a headache, and Roman sticks his nose where it doesn't belong.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This one was maybe a little exposition-heavy, but still fun (in my opinion, at least). Never fear, there is Plot™ coming soon...</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Roman’s life at “the bloody cottage”, as Deceit called it, had fallen into a routine that wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>un</span>
  </em>
  <span>pleasant, considering that it was essentially captivity. It almost felt like he was a kid on a break from school, except that his “parents” were a bunch of other asshole teenagers and they sucked. Except Heart. He liked Heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He spent most of his time sleeping, trying to be a nuisance, and sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. So far, though, they had been annoyingly successful at not talking about anything important around him. He helped out in the kitchen sometimes, usually when Heart was doing the cooking, because Logic was an absolute dictator about mincing vs dicing, Fear was a little careless with knives, and Roman was banned from working with Deceit because they’d get so distracted arguing with each other that dinner would inevitably burn.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman also did a lot of reading. They had an unreasonable amount of books for four young people living in the woods, and he was making his way through them at a good clip. He was delighted to discover all eleven Artemisia Proudscream books, which he hadn’t read since he was ten, and even more delighted that they were better than he remembered. Once he figured out how to escape this hellhole, he was going to take the full series with him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were a lot of books he’d never heard of, though, and some of them were downright weird. He could only examine, rather than read, most of the ones in the latter category. Many were unmarked, some were in foreign languages, and yet others had letters that shifted and swarmed like bees across the page and gave him a headache to look at. He spent a fun half hour messing around with one thin paperback in which all the letters would move depending on how you tilted it, pooling in the corners. And there was one book that, when he cracked open the spine, let out a noise like an upset toddler and launched itself into his face, knocking him backwards onto the floor. Deceit had to pry it off him and stroke its spine until it calmed down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman was particularly interested in the collection of books that Deceit kept under the couch, which he was forbidden to touch. This wouldn’t have stopped him except for the fact that the cottage was so small he was never alone in the living room for more than thirty seconds at a time. He’d seen Deceit reading a few of them on occasion, but the spines and covers were either unmarked or covered by a makeshift paper jacket, and Deceit had an uncannily good sense of when Roman was trying to sneak up behind him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This mystery was made all the more intriguing by how boring the thick, dusty grimoires that Deceit forced him to read were. Their “magique lessons” had so far been a huge letdown. He’d been expecting to at least get to break a few things, maybe start a few fires, but it was just a lot of reading. The pages of the giant tomes swarmed with spidery, inconsistent handwriting crammed edge to edge and were riddled with weird words that Roman kept having to pester Deceit to explain to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On one gloomy morning, the two of them were sitting at the kitchen table for a “lesson”.  Heart was kneading dough on the counter behind them, humming to himself. Fear had emerged from his room minutes earlier with a pillowcase that seemed to have something moving inside it, said “I’ll be back later, probably,” and disappeared.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman was staring blankly at the total nonsense in front of him that apparently had something to do with the importance of hand motions when casting. He sighed loudly and shoved the book away from him, hoping Deceit would look up and scold him so Roman could goad him into an argument. But Deceit remained where he was, bent over his own large and banal-looking book. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had an array of plant clippings and small objects spread out in front of him, and was fussing with them, making small piles and then positioning the piles into artful, symmetric arrangements. The one he was currently working on consisted of three long-stemmed yellow flowers laid across a small, flat chunk of wood, surrounded by a circle of gleaming multicolored buttons with what looked like tarragon leaves crossed into x’s underneath each one. Deceit was painstakingly tying together each of the objects with thin red thread.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you doing?” Roman asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Making wards,” Deceit said. “This one protects against bad luck.” He poked himself with the needle and swore under his breath. Evidently it had not begun to work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman watched him for another few moments, then reached across the table and slid Deceit’s book over towards him. Deceit shot him an annoyed look but didn’t stop him. He thumbed through it, using one hand to mark the page Deceit was using. It was formatted much like a cookbook, with different ‘recipes’ for different wards, lists of ingredients, and a procedure. There were a few diagrams splashed throughout, but for the most part, it required the reader to rely on written directions.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He flipped back to the instructions for Deceit’s bad-luck ward. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Agaynst the Probability of Mis F’rtunes, </span>
  </em>
  <span>the title read. He skimmed the required components: Alder, sunny colwart, tarragon (as he had guessed), and something called mechaynese, which must’ve been the buttons. A hand reached over and dragged the book back to the other side of the table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Paws off, Princey,” Deceit said. He picked up his creation, held it within his cupped hands, and began to shake it, incanting a few guttural words from the page as he did so.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He cracked open his hands. Sitting on the flat of his palm was a perfectly round pale pink stone, the color of a milky summer sunset, about an inch in diameter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whoa,” said Roman.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit smirked triumphantly. “Want to have a look?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman’s curiosity outweighed his unwillingness to give Deceit the satisfaction. He snatched it from Deceit and held it up to the light, studying it. It was warm, and glowed faintly, and the hue shifted on a sliding scale between white and coral depending on how the light hit it. There were shallow indentations across both sides of the ward, creating an intricate pattern that Roman could feel under his fingers but not see.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s fucking brilliant,” he admitted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit was preening like a prize peacock. “You can have it, if you want.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman shrugged, trying to look indifferent. “I guess I could use a good luck charm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not a good luck charm,” Deceit corrected. “It’s an anti-bad luck charm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman rolled his eyes at him, and started to put it in his pocket before realizing he had no clue if that’s what you were supposed to do with wards. “What do I do with it?” he asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Give it here for a second,” Deceit commanded, holding out his hand. Roman did so, and Deceit said something else to it and did a spiraling sort of motion with his fingers, and a thin silver chain extended out of the top of the stone, dropped down towards the table, then made a loop back up to reconnect with its other end. He handed it back to Roman. “See if it fits.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This isn’t secretly cursed, is it?” Roman said, looping it around his neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t be an idiot,” Deceit said. “I have no desire to be legally and spiritually prosecuted over a spit-swear.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, thanks,” Roman said grudgingly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit smiled a little at him, his harsh, peaky face softening at the edges, then asked, “Did you finish your reading?”, effectively ruining the moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s so </span>
  <em>
    <span>boring</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Roman complained. “I don’t see how any of this is supposed to help me do magique.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit opened his mouth, gearing up for a lecture about the importance of understanding theory before applying it to practice, and Roman opened </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span> mouth to call him an sodding elitist prat, but Heart appeared at the edge of the table, dusted in a fine coating of flour, and trilled, “Morning!” before Roman got to employ even one of the scathing nicknames he’d brainstormed the night before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi, Heart,” said Roman, who was not even a little bit resentful, no sir. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Deceit,” Heart said, in that sweet tone of voice that meant he was about to ask for a favor that was not a favor in the sense that it probably wouldn’t get repaid, “Would you mind running out and picking some alliara for me? Fear said there’s some near the river.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sounds great.” Roman slammed his book shut and sprung to his feet. “It’s about time for a break.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Perfect,” said Deceit, staying put, “Look, Prince’ll go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart put his hands on his hips and fixed Deceit with a disappointed mien. “And so will you. With him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit grumbled while putting his shoes on and all the way out the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once outside, Roman skipped ahead on the now-familiar path towards the river, relishing the fresh, clean air and relative solitude. There was nothing to do out of doors except go on walks, which he was only allowed to do with one of the others at his side in case he made a cut and run. It was an unfounded fear on their part, because the Nolands were so huge and dense Roman was more likely to walk in circles for hours and die of thirst than reach civilization.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart was his favorite walking companion. He didn’t get annoyed when Roman wanted to stop and climb a tree or examine the corpse of a squirrel (though he did look a little green about it), and the only one capable of normal conversation. Deceit and Logic would clam right up at the barest hint of a personal question, even if it was “What’s your favorite color?” Heart, on the other hand, had a lot of strange and entertaining takes on the different emotional properties of various colors, and on everything else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman hated walking with Fear, who regaled him with grisly tales about murders that he claimed took place right where they were standing and tried to shove him into puddles. Logic was kind of insufferable, but he also liked Artemisia Proudscream and they had a couple great arguments about the fuckability of Duralieu the harpy, so even though his opinions were objectively wrong he was pretty fun to talk to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Deceit… well, Deceit was okay. He was a sullen asshole, for sure, and spent most of his time kicking pinecones and complaining that it was either too cold or too hot, but he shrieked like a child if Roman stepped on his shoes, which was hilarious, and mostly let him do his own thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Slow down,” Deceit yelled from some ten yards back, and Roman reluctantly ground to a halt to wait for him to catch up. He turned a corner and appeared, huffing slightly, his sandy hair tumbling down his forehead and over his eyes. They walked side by side for a while, not speaking. Their shoes squelched against the marshy ground, still pliable and wet from last night’s rain. The trees gazed down affably at them, like parental sentinels, the gentle breeze winding its way through the forest making them appear to be waving. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman picked a large stick that was lying across the path and ran it against the trees they passed, creating a repetitive pattern of THUNK-THUNK-THUNKs punctuated by the silence of empty air. He considered brandishing the muddy end of the branch in Deceit’s direction, to see if he’d scream, but he could feel the warmth of the bad-luck charm against his chest even through his t-shirt, and he felt a little bad. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dropped the stick and mentally checked it off as a debt repaid. He glanced over at Deceit, who was watching a flock of birds wing their way across the acid-washed grey sky, his usual pissed-off scowl smoothed out into a mildly annoyed frown.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thought occurred to Roman that this was probably his best shot at getting any immediate information out of him. False sense of security and all that. A hundred potential questions ran through his mind, ranging from “Is this really an insurgent group because I was kind of bluffing when I implied it before” to “How’d you get that burn scar on your face and does it feel weird when you touch it” but what came out of his mouth was, “Are you guys friends?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” said Deceit, looking defensive already. “Who? Why?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean—” Roman mentally kicked himself for blowing it. “You and Logic and everybody.” He shrugged, trying for nonchalance. “I was just curious.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit glanced back up at the sky, chewing at the inside of his cheek. “Yes, I suppose,” he said after a couple long moments.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you know their names?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That</span>
  </em>
  <span> surprised him. He had thought it was something being kept from him alone. It was now his turn to ask why.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because we’re friends,” said Deceit shortly. He pushed past Roman and started walking faster with a decisiveness that signaled an end to the conversation. “Step lively, won’t you? I don’t have all day.” Ordinarily Roman would’ve whipped out an (impeccable) parody mocking Deceit’s imperiousness, but he was otherwise occupied. He replayed the conversation in his mind, and a sense of giddy glee welled up in him as his newest puzzle piece slotted into place. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It felt great to be this fucking smart.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>A few days later, Heart set down his spoon midway through dinner (an over-watered vegetable stew) and cleared his throat. “I want to send a letter to my family.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Absolutely not,” Logic said instantly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart pressed forward. “I used to write every week, and now they haven’t heard from me in ages. They’ll be worried.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logic shut his eyes, touched his forehead, and took one slow, deep breath. He opened his eyes again, and folded his hands on the table in front of him. “Heart, my friend. Are you out of your fucking mind?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” said Heart, as if that was a serious question.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What, did you really think I would say: sure, go ahead, recklessly endanger the modicum of safety we’ve managed to achieve because your fucking family misses you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart stood up. Roman was forcefully reminded that Logic was a rather precocious teenager, and Heart was a tall, strong, fully educated adult old enough to have changed Logic’s diapers had they known each other as kids. He loomed over the table. Roman had not known he was capable of looming.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re lucky I even </span>
  <em>
    <span>asked</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he snapped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logic got to his feet as well. His head barely came up to Heart’s shoulder. They glared at each other from across the table, faces sharply sliced out from the background by the yellow kitchen lights. Or rather, Logic glared, and Heart looked at him with a slight disappointed downturn in his brow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, what if they get worried enough to file a missing report?” Fear cut in, before Logic could fling himself over the table and gauge Heart’s liver out with his soup spoon. He was leaning back in his chair, trying to look disinterested, like the thought had just occurred to him. “Wouldn’t that be a hundred times worse?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logic rounded on him. “Were you in on this?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He at least had the presence of mind to look chastised. “Well, he has a point. Ignoring the fact that we have other lives won't make it go away.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logic’s face had shifted away from its usual neutrality into a ball of barely contained rage veneered behind a thin veil of icy calm. He surveyed the table, looking for allies. His eyes rested on to Roman for a split second, and despite his status as hostage rather than compatriot, Roman got the sense that if he said something, Logic would listen— provided he spoke in Logic’s defense, of course. If he was smart, he would throw in two cents, cash it in as a favor later, and milk it for all it was worth. But Roman, for once in his life, bypassed smart in favor of physically intact, and kept his damn mouth shut.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Deceit?” Logic said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit was diligently mashing his carrots into little baby-food-sized chunks that bobbed in the broth like pollywogs, keeping his eyes fixed on his bowl. “Does it look like I care,” he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come on, Logic, please. We’ll be careful,” Heart insisted. “Fear’s right, if they think we’re in danger they’re going to start poking around. My family would, anyway. Do you want my face tacked up all over the Hills?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t have any stamps,” Logic said. From anyone else it would’ve sounded like a concession but Logic made it seem disproportionately compelling. Roman could’ve used him in his secondary school debate club.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So we’ll go to the market and get some,” Heart countered. “We’ll make a day of it. We need more food anyway.” He gestured to the stew, which was about seventy percent chickpeas now that Roman thought about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” said Fear, “Come on, L, you just hate that we’ve got a point.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Logic ground out, “I hate that you don’t seem to care about </span>
  <em>
    <span>us</span>
  </em>
  <span>, as a </span>
  <em>
    <span>team</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and what we’re trying to do. We all knew what this meant when we got involved—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart took a step forward. “I swear, if the words ‘means to an end’ leave your mouth—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, hey, I hope I didn’t just hear you calling Heart selfish,” Fear said at the same time, to add another fun element to the party. Logic was still plowing forward with his speech about commitments and sacrifices and debts being owned, and Roman was trying to listen to all three of them yelling at once, which only made each individual thread more confusing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit kicked bottom of the table with a loud </span>
  <em>
    <span>CLANG</span>
  </em>
  <span>, sending the silverware leaping. Everyone startled and fell silent. He picked up his soup, stuck his nose in the air, and said, “I don’t give a shit whether you lot want to write letters snivelling to your mums or whether you get arrested because of it. You are all acting like children. I’m going to my room.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a joke in there that had something to do with it usually being children who got sent to their rooms during dinner, but Roman had recently grown a little attached to his tongue so he kept quiet, and no one attacked him. This was great. Maybe radical silence was the winning strategy. That would’ve been a great thing to figure out some, oh, eleven years ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t have a room,” Fear yelled after him. Deceit flipped him off. They heard him stomping down the hallway. His stupid ugly pointy fancy shoes were leather soled, so the angry clunks reverberating throughout the room were obviously deliberate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logic sighed. He looked from Heart’s crossed arms and pursed lips, to Fear’s mask of nonchalance, and finally to the plain and wide-eyed curiosity wrought on Roman’s face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Heart,” he said, evenly, after a moment, “May I speak to you outside?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course,” replied Heart. “It would be an honor.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was dark out, and probably cold, but neither of them bothered to grab a coat. They walked out together, stiffly. Heart held open the door and Logic strode through without a sideward glance, and then it swung shut with a dull thud, and then, as if a switch had been flicked, there was a lot of muffled shouting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear and Roman looked at each other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Does this happen a lot?” Roman said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, now and then,” Fear said. “It’s been a minute, though. Thank god. We needed a good row to spice things up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He strode over to the big window between the counter and the dining table and Roman watched in fascination as he undid the lock and dragged it open with a dull scraping sound.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you doing?” he asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eavesdropping in the bushes,” Fear said. “Don’t wait up.” He hooked one lanky leg over the sill, ducked under the head of the frame, and slid smoothly through, dropping with a soft thump onto the ground below. A single brown, long-fingered hand reached back up and quietly tugged the window shut by the grilles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman was alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wait a minute.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman was </span>
  <em>
    <span>alone</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He counted to thirty, holding his breath. Nobody came rushing in. He could hear the faint outlines of Heart and Logic’s voices as they rose and fell, and though they were no longer hollering at each other they didn’t seem to be reaching a consensus either. As soon as the half-minute was up, he sprung to his feet, dumped his remaining soup down the drain (sorry, Heart) and set the bowl in the sink. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>First, he plucked </span>
  <em>
    <span>Artemisia Proudscream and the Neurotic Banshee </span>
  </em>
  <span>off the top of the bookshelf and sat it open on the floor so that he could turn and appear to be reading if anybody walked in. Then he dropped to the carpet in front of the couch, stomach down, and lifted the skirt. He squeezed his nose to keep from sneezing. The motion had agitated the dust bunnies, which were far more numerous than he would expect Deceit to tolerate. There were also way more books down here than he had thought, spread out in a messy pile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The one on the very top of the stack was comparatively small, about as thick as the combined width of his first two fingers. It had a faded yellow cover and a thin ribbon marking a page. He’d seen Deceit reading it before. It looked innocuous enough, and in good condition except for the coloring. Most of the other books were bigger, older, and, Roman suspected, of the variety likely to bite or screech. One was the source of the rattling noise that Heart had assured him was the heater, its pages shifting and swelling up and down with something like breath, which was far too disturbing to think about for more than half a second. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pulled the yellow book out into the living room and shifted his body so that he was no longer perpendicular to the couch, flipping to the first page. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Healing Magique for Beginners</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it read, in blocky serif print. He frowned, then quickly flipped through the first half of the pages until he reached the one Deceit had marked, and frowned some more. Deceit seemed to be making his way through the book, judging from his scribbled notes in the margins and the way he marked off the practice exercises. But that didn’t make any sense. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>From what little Roman managed to absorb from his hours slogging through </span>
  <em>
    <span>Basics of Technique and Theory</span>
  </em>
  <span>, healing was pretty rudimentary stuff. Of course, it was a different matter entirely once you got into the business of serious injuries, or dealing with the eyes or internal organs. But the yellow book— at least the marked-up half of it— dealt with things like paper cuts and stubbed toes. Back home, Roman had had scrapes from games of tag healed by neighborhood kids as young as seven. Everybody knew that tutoring courses got the basic, most practical things out of the way first— Sewing, cleaning, how to dull the bruising of a black eye. Why would Deceit have to practice that?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever, he didn’t have time for this. He could dwell on it later. He returned the book to the stack and pulled out the one underneath it, which was heavier and bound with thick, soft leather. The gold-printed title on the spine was written in hieroglyphic language he didn’t recognize. He thumbed through it, hoping maybe it would auto-translate for him, but it stayed resolutely incomprehensible, save for a few horrifying diagrams whose meanings needed no words.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He flicked through a couple more books, avoiding the ones that looked even slightly alive (which eliminated a good chunk of the pile right off the bat). He couldn’t glean anything from them, either because of language or squirming letters or outright blankness. There was probably some sort of spell or passcode to make them reveal their contents, but since his magique ability was limited to angry outbursts, there was no way he could channel it except for maybe throwing the books across the room and yelling. Which didn’t really gel with his new, sneaky life choices.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had just selected a green and silver volume about the size of his hand from the very bottom of the mound, which had rearranging letters but a promising number of pictures and a bird on the front, when he heard the creak of the window opening and pulled himself out from underneath the couch in time to see Fear hauling himself back in through the window. They stared at each other, Fear with one leg still dangling outside, Roman holding the evidence of his crimes in his hand like an idiot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dropped my… pen,” said Roman. He was very obviously not holding a pen. He was very obviously holding a forbidden enchanted book. Fear looked from him to the book to the couch to the window to the opening of the hallway where Deceit had disappeared earlier. Then he pulled his leg inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I went to my room right after Logic and Heart left,” he said, voice flat, “You haven’t seen me all evening.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course not,” said Roman innocently, “How could I, when I’ve just been sitting at the kitchen table, enjoying some light reading?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear grinned a little, gave him a two-fingered salute, and slid out of the room. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dear Em.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman paused, tapping his chin with his pen as he considered what to write. Nothing too specific, because Logic would find out and kill him, and then his uncle would kill Logic, resurrect Roman, and kill him again.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I’m sorry I haven’t been able to write to you, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he began. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’ve been busy. How is the farm? I’m safe and well, and I’ve made friends. </span>
  </em>
  <span>That was a bit of a stretch, but what Emile didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. He stopped again, nib hovering over the paper, trying to work out to broach the subject of— Well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear popped up over his shoulder and said, “Whatcha writing, Little Prince?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman scowled and covered the page with his arm. “A letter.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He held up his hands, taking a step back. “My bad. Anyway, Heart says to move your lazy ass, it’s almost time to go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m certain Heart did not say that,” Roman said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was the morning of their outing to the market. Heart had won the fight, and he and Logic were still acting frosty with each other, but at least civil. It was a lovely, bright morning, the sky a pale cloudless blue. Logic had insisted on staying behind, which nobody had bothered to argue with, and forced Fear to do so as well, claiming that he needed his help with “something”. Fear agreed amiably enough, saying that he shouldn’t go out in public much anyway because of all those arrest warrants. Roman had no idea if he was kidding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart didn’t look thrilled per se about the prospect of looking after Deceit and Roman for half a day, but Roman was too excited to feel sympathy for him. He hadn’t been to a Rivers market in forever, and he was itching to get out of the fucking Nolands and talk to some people that weren’t, you know, completely insane.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someone shouted for Fear outside and he jogged away, ruffling Roman’s hair as he did so. He’d been a lot friendlier since the incident with the books— still a dick, but more in the way he was a dick to Logic than to Deceit— since for some backwards reason, his snooping seemed to have made Fear trust him more, not less. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman returned to his letter. It seemed he didn’t have time to get into the details, which was probably for the best. Short and sweet was the way to go.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I’m still looking for him. Got a little sidetracked, but I haven’t given up. I know you don’t like it, but I’m being careful, I promise. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Another lie. </span>
  <em>
    <span>And to be honest, you can’t really stop me. I love you so much and always. Say hi to Elliott for me. Love, R.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He folded up the sheet of paper and jammed it into the envelope, scribbling the address on the front and slapping one of Logic’s removable blue stickers over it. “Done,” he announced, and Deceit looked up from where he was transcribing Heart’s shopping list, scribbled on the back of a napkin, onto a sheet of actual paper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In there.” He pointed to a small white canvas bag on the coffee table. Roman dropped his in, peering at the other three letters, each with an identical sticker over the address.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright, kiddos,” called Heart from out front, “Let’s get this show on the road.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman sprang up and bounded out the door far ahead of Deceit, who snagged the letter bag and followed with an eye roll and a sigh.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Stepping into the throng of the market was like stepping back into his own skin. The tall, spindly buildings, their mossy tiled roofs and slender mismatched windows, packed together shoulder-to-shoulder, leering down at the cobbled streets far below. The patchwork of tents and umbrellas, white and gold and pink, the shouting, overlapping voices, the hiss of meat being thrown against a grill, the hum of dialogue and the thrum of dynamism, the singular, unifying, human heartbeat always present in a large crowd.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a split second, as Roman tilted his head back towards the tops of the towering buildings and the small rectangle of watery blue sky between their bent heads, he felt so young, so small. He felt the phantom hands of his brother and his mum and the dizzy lift of his feet lifting off the ground as they swung him between them. Heart’s hand on his shoulder pulled him back into himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, team,” he said, tugging his two honorary children towards him and into the mouth of a shallow alleyway, forming a huddle that reminded Roman of his disastrous rugby days. The crowd flowed around them like water dodging rocks in a stream. “Here’s the game plan. Logic wants us back by sunset, so we will be quick about it. No distractions, no dilly-dallying. Everybody pay attention to your surroundings and stick together, alright? And for Kayda’s sake,” he leveled a pointed look at Deceit, “Don’t go looking for trouble.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t go </span>
  <em>
    <span>looking</span>
  </em>
  <span> for trouble,” Deceit huffed, “I simply, on occasion, happen to stumble upon it. Like a disguised trapdoor.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In that case, watch your step,” Heart said. “And Prince,” he handed Roman the shopping list and a blue ballpoint pen, which had bite marks around the top, “You can be our scribe, how’s that sound?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thrilling,” Roman said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what am I, a simple pack mule?” Deceit sniffed as Heart shoved a large canvas sack carrying the other, empty canvas sacks into his arms. Roman made a face at him. He would much rather drag around a couple bags than keep record of their purchases, but he wasn’t about to offer to switch if it would make Deceit happy. Deceit had probably never carried a shopping bag in his life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Onwards!” Heart announced, and frog-marched them into the oncoming stream of foot traffic, already looking like he was staving off a headache.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As Heart bodily propelled them through the crowd, like a two-faced, ill-tempered battering ram, Roman craned his neck around, trying to catch glimpses of the scenes that flitted by around them. He wondered if that jewelry stall with the bright red umbrella was still around, or the old woman who sold sweet rolls so hot and fresh they poured steam out like a kettle when you cracked into their golden crust. He cursed his younger self for not paying attention to the names of anything. Even if the businesses had survived, he had no information about them except for the snapshots in his memories, and no possibility of finding them. Especially not at this pace. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They screeched to a stop in front of a bakery stall. A row of wicker baskets containing various baked goods sat atop a table draped with white-and-red chequered fabric. Heart darted over to one end of the table to survey the spread, while Deceit and Roman remained parked at the other, like dogs tied to a tree by the leash. Deceit hugged the bags to his chest as if they contained something precious, tucking his chin over the top, and was glancing out at the busy streets with an expression of trepidation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman peered at a pile of honey whole wheat loaves, and the small sign stuck into the topmost one via toothpick.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ten brillants?!” he said incredulously before he could stop himself. Deceit, as well as the burly man running the stand, turned to glare at him. Heart, a couple paces along, was absorbed in a lively discussion with another market-goer about the inclusion of almond flour in his grandmother’s banana cake recipe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shhh,” Deceit hissed, smacking him on the shoulder. It was not particularly playful, and rather hurt. Roman resisted the urge to pout.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s bloody ridiculous,” Roman hissed back. “Last time I was here you could buy two loaves for half that.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit stuck his nose in the air, pretending to be examining a spread of apple pasties. “Well, it’s hardly their fault, is it?” He jerked his chin in the direction of the baker, who Roman was still frowning peevishly at. “You know, the legislation—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Having the tragic plight of the working class explained to him by </span>
  <em>
    <span>Deceit</span>
  </em>
  <span>, of all people, with his fucking accent and gleaming boots and shirt sleeves neatly rolled up to his elbows, was something Roman could not put up with for another second without committing considerable violence. He stormed off to join Heart on the other side of the table, ducking around a family that had pushed up to the counter between them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What? What?” Deceit said, following him, his voice in Roman’s ear like that of a large, privileged wasp. “Don’t tell me you’re a Fatherlandist.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I just hate you,” Roman snapped. He unfolded the shopping list with a dramatic swish and leaned into Heart’s line of sight, pen at the ready, smiling beatifically up at him. “Hello,” he chirped, “Do you need help with anything?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart melted. “Oh, you’re so sweet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bitter scowl that descended onto Deceit's face was oh so emotionally satisfying.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>About an hour later, they had only crossed off three more things from the shopping list.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re so behind schedule,” Heart wailed. They were in another huddle in the shadow cast by a small cart selling neon blue popcorn, the flavor of which Roman could not puzzle out. “Oh, Logic is going to be so upset.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their delay was partly owed to Heart’s tendency to get pulled into conversations with total strangers, though Roman wasn’t about to bring that up. Heart had made more friends in the past couple hours than Roman had during his entire secondary school career. The lion’s share of the holdup, however, was the sheer number of people packing the streets. Even the smallest of stalls had a line, and getting from point A to point B was a sport in and of itself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why is it so crowded?” Roman complained. “I’ve never seen this many people come to a market at once.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The last time you were here a loaf of bread cost two and a half brillants,” Deceit snipped. “Perhaps times have changed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, Prince has a point,” Heart said, placing a hand on the front of Roman’s shoulder to prevent any threatening steps forward. “This isn’t normal.” He sighed, pushing up his glasses to rub at the inner corner of his eyes. “I hate to say it, but I think we’re going to have to split up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, perfect,” Deceit said. “Prince can go with you, and I can—” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart winced. “Actually… I was thinking I’d go by myself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit’s mouth fell open. “You don’t trust me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Frankly,” said Heart, “Not really.” Ignoring Deceit’s protests, he carefully ripped the shopping list into two pieces, and handed the slightly larger half back to Roman. “Here. You guys work through this. I’ll handle the rest and mail the letters. We’ll meet back here in, hmm, two hours, and touch base.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Great.” Roman leaned in towards Heart. “And don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him,” he added in a conspiratorial stage whisper, nodding towards Deceit, who was currently struggling to divide up the bags into two piles without letting any of them drop to the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck you,” said Deceit conversationally.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart rifled through his battered leather wallet, pulling out a wad of bills and folding them into a thick square. These he gave to Deceit. Roman would be offended by Heart’s lack of faith in him if it wasn’t completely deserved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, bye, don’t die and don’t make me kill you later,” Heart said, and left.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman skimmed the list, half-disappointed to find nothing out of the ordinary, though he figured they chose raiding abandoned manors over markets when it came to ‘supplies’. “Alright, where to first?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit tucked the cash into his pocket and peered over Roman’s shoulder. “Produce?” He suggested. “I saw a stall about half a block that way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman reluctantly allowed Deceit to take the lead, hanging a couple yards behind him as they swerved their way through the sea of people. Deceit looked uncomfortable, moving stiffly and holding his belongings tight against his body. At one point, they got stuck behind a group of fifty-something women who had stopped for a chat and either didn’t hear or disregarded Deceit’s repeated, “Excuse me!”s. Roman slammed his elbow into Deceit’s back, shouted, “Move!” and propelled them through the crowd, taking great joy in Deceit’s squawk of discontent and nearly knocking a lady in a foot-tall purple hat into an open gas grill.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What was that for?” Deceit asked, affronted, as they approached the produce stall. He was trying in vain to fix his hair that had fallen into his eyes sometime during their little shoving adventure, but without a mirror, his efforts only served to make the part more lopsided.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman pursed his lips at him. “You were being too nice.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit gasped in mock-glee, pressing a hand to his chest, “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not a compliment,” Roman informed him in an undertone, then turned his most charming smile onto the girl at the produce counter. She appeared about Roman’s age, with amber skin and a head of tight dark curls. “Hello! How are you today?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>doing</span>
  </em>
  <span> that,” Deceit muttered, stepping on Roman’s shoe. Without looking, Roman hooked his foot around Deceit’s leg and drove it into the back of his knee.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m well, thanks,” she said, and glanced over at Deceit, who had buckled forward and was clinging to the edge of the table for support. “Um, is your friend alright?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, he’s fine,” said Roman breezily, “Just clumsy. Uncoordinated.” He patted Deceit’s shoulder and received a dirty look for his trouble. “Completely inept,” he added, which was maybe overkill, but the girl didn’t seem bothered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What can I help you with?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re looking for some… uh.” Roman glanced over the sheet of paper, trying to decide on a good starting point. “Would it be bad form if I just handed you the list and asked you to give me everything on here that you carry?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whatever works,” she said, sounding amused, and Roman relinquished the list with no small measure of relief.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So,” Roman said, leaning forward and against the table as she began herding foods from various baskets into the bag that he had also passed over. She really was quite pretty. “Busy day today?” Deceit let out a derisive snort at his attempt at small talk, which Roman ignored, because Deceit was sulking a couple feet away and pretending to be absorbed in the settings on his watch, and that was at least forty percent more pathetic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell me about it,” she groaned. “It’s almost as bad as the week before the Feast.” She and Roman shared a sympathetic shudder. Deceit looked bewildered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Any idea why?” Roman asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The senator visiting, I’d expect,” she said, struggling to tie up a bundle of greens that appeared to valiantly oppose her efforts. “Surprised you haven’t heard. Moon’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>campaigning</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’d do it,” Roman admitted, and paused, interest piqued by the disguised note of disdain in her voice. After a cautious sidelong glance at Deceit, who was staring blankly at a bushel of lettuce (Roman took this as support), he added, “Though </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span> anyone’s interested is beyond me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman’s toes were not immediately crushed by Deceit’s unreasonably heavy boots, and the girl’s face brightened, sharpening, so it was a win all around. “I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” she said in a delighted undertone, “I don’t know why she even bothers when she’s running unopposed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because she’s just like us, obviously,” Roman scoffed. “We should all be so honored by her presence.” He picked up a tomato and began tossing it from hand to hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Slumming it with the commoners,” she drawled, then proceeded to snatch the tomato out of the air and place it back in the basket with its fellows. “You smash it, you buy it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Moon isn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> bad, though,” Roman admitted, drumming his fingers on a honeydew melon, “Now, if </span>
  <em>
    <span>Godfrey</span>
  </em>
  <span> decided to show his face…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She snorted. “I’d like to think the good people of Rivers would have the decency to rip him into about three thousand small pieces.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You and me both.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman felt a sharp tug on the back of his collar and stumbled backward a few feet before spinning around to face none other than Deceit. Jesus fuck, what could Roman possibly have done wrong now? It felt like Deceit was looking for any excuse to tell him off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?!” he snapped, but his irritation dissolved into confusion once he caught sight of Deceit’s expression. His eyes were huge and panicked in his ashen face as he gnawed at the inside of his cheek, features contorted into a caricature of his usual sullenness. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grabbed Roman’s shoulder, nails digging through his shirt and into his skin. “We have to find Heart,” he said, voice shrill with alarm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman blinked at him. “It’s been, like, ten minutes, what are you talking about? You seriously can’t deal with me for </span>
  <em>
    <span>two hours—</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up,” Deceit growled, “It’s not all about you, Prince, shut up, shut up.” He shoved a hand through his hair, breath coming in quick, shallow spurts. “Fuck, this is really fucking bad. I—” His eyes flicked around wildly, from the bright colors of fresh fruit to the cracking pavement beneath his shoes, before landing on Roman. Fumbling through his pocket, he pressed a few bills into Roman’s hand and commanded, “Stay here. Don’t move. Okay?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” said Roman. “I won’t, I swear.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit clapped him on the shoulder, mumbled, “I have to— I—” took off at a run. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman watched him go until he turned a corner and the bright white back of his button-down vanished behind a hanging hot pink tapestry advertising cheap massages. Roman returned to the produce stand to pay for the vegetables and chatted with the girl some more as she rang him up, promising to drop in for a visit next time he was at the market. Then, tucking what remained of the money into the pocket of his jeans, he sauntered down the road in the opposite direction from Deceit and was swallowed up by the crowd.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>If you liked this chapter, pls consider leaving a comment or <a href="https://unring-this-bell.tumblr.com/post/619033073056645120/logans-logical-guide-to-political-rebellion">reblogging on tumblr!</a> I hope y'all are enjoying reading this wacky, magical adventure as much as I am enjoying writing it &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Roman makes an ill-advised decision and poor Janus has to deal with it— Along with an irritatingly well-dressed ghost from his past. Somebody should really be paying him for this.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hi all! I apologize for the wait on this one! It was written ages ago, but I like to stay a few steps ahead of my posting schedule and chapter 5 was giving me trouble.</p><p>Also, <a href="tinyurl.com/blmforever">here</a> is a hyperdoc of resources, information, and places to donate regarding the BLM movement. Check it out if you have the chance!</p><p>Warnings: Anxiety, yelling, food, jokes/"jokes" about death/dying</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>No hand on his shoulder, keeping him in line. No watchful eyes, no peripheral scrutiny, nobody to say, “stay” or “don’t” or “none of your business.” He couldn’t believe his luck. For the first time in the few weeks he’d known him, Roman felt a genuine rush of fondness for Deceit, idiot as he had proven to be. Almost involuntarily, Roman let out a whoop of excitement, and nobody even looked askance at him. God, he loved the city.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He strolled, now, taking his sweet time to pore over the different foodstuffs and trinkets being hawked by the vendors. Drawn in by a collection of enchanted porcelain cat statues, he lingered to watch them prowl across the table, pausing every ten seconds or so to lick their paws. The idea of buying one was tempting, despite his limited funds and the fact that he would have no place to put it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wrenched himself away and started walking again, inwardly kicking himself. He’d need to be smarter this time around, more honest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shit, he realized, he would need a job. Maybe the girl from the vegetable stand could throw him a line. But income would mean responsibility, and a tether. What were the odds that Remus happened to be hanging out in the Rivers? Did Roman really expect to run onto him on the street and drag him back to the farm for happily-ever-after, just like that?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All the complications and impossibilities Roman had been ignoring for the past few weeks came crashing back into his awareness tenfold. The people around him chattered and jostled like a pitchy, tumultuous ocean, their variously bright faces morphed from genial beacons into the bitter glares of potential enemies. He needed to sit still. To think. Make a plan. Roman had never been great at any of those things. Most of all, he needed </span>
  <em>
    <span>silence</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he spotted a tattered yellow umbrella, the sight of it cutting through the noise in his head like a scythe. The fringed edges fluttered in the wind, pressed against the blue of the sky, a photograph of a memory superimposed in front of him as if by magic. He ducked under a woman’s outstretched arm and made a beeline for it, struggling as he moved perpendicular to the trajectory of the crowd. They had begun moving, almost as a unit, in one direction. Probably for Moon’s speech, if he remembered right and the Square was in fact that way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And there it was, so charming and familiar, the rickety wheels on the cart, the rusty silver body. Absurdly, he felt the urge to drop to his knees before it and press his cheek against the hot, sun-soaked metal, to fling his arms around it as far as they would go and cling like a madman. It looked so much smaller. He felt strange walking up to it alone, like he was stepping back into the past except now something was missing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The old lady wasn’t there, now replaced by a middle-aged man, but the sweet rolls in the glass case were as golden and sticky-shining as ever. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi,” Roman said. “One roll, please.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man dropped it into the mouth of a wax paper bag and handed it to Roman, who paid. As he fished out the coins from his pocket and counted them out, he thought about how pissed Heart would be. And </span>
  <em>
    <span>Logic</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Deceit was going to get skinned alive. He almost felt guilty, but pushed it aside. They didn’t care about him, he wasn’t going to report them, all’s well and the rest, no harm done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man dropped the change back into Roman’s open palm, and Roman hesitated, a nebulous sentence on the tip of his tongue, something that went a little like, “I used to come here with my family,” but that wasn’t the kind of thing you said out loud to strangers, so he smiled, gave a, “Thank you,” and turned away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pausing a few meters from the cart, he stopped and took the sweet roll between both his hands, ducking his head to pin the bag to his chest with his chin. He split it in half, and the steam broke across his face in a warm, saccharine huff. Gingerly, he took a bite. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was almost too hot to taste properly, and he felt more than sensed the airy, nutty sweetness of brown sugar in his mouth, like an echo, a reflex. The wave of melancholy he’d been fighting off ever since he, Heart and Deceit had pushed open the doors of their horrible clanging car swept him up into its arms.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stared at his feet in their peeling, battered sneakers, and thought against his will of Deceit, once again: his boots against the cracking pavement, gleaming as if affixed under a spotlight. The weight in his stomach clenched into a fist, angry and cold. Thoughts flickered through his brain so quickly they had yet to solidify into words: Remus grinning in the dark, Senator Invell’s metallic voice on the radio, thick slices of brown bread, Deceit’s Capitol drawl, the way he turned up his nose at the way Roman used a fork, his pale, thin lips pressed tight and hissing, “It’s hardly their fault…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he remembered Moon. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The curiosity got the better of his contempt. Roman returned the broken halves of the pastry to the paper bag and allowed himself to be dragged along by the crowd once more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Square was smack in the center of the Rivers’ commercial district, a flat expanse of cobblestone cut out from within the jungle of buildings like the footprint of a giant wearing very blocky shoes. Four avenues converged upon it from various directions. If you walked out of it and kept going, you’d eventually find your way back. The Rivers were labyrinthine like that. It was only the inevitable presence of other people that kept it from feeling menacing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> Normally, the Square was a small respite from the crush of the Market, the extra space  permitting the crowd to thin out. Couples perched on splintery wooden benches to eat sandwiches with gleaming, greasy fingers and give each other self-conscious looks. Children shrieked and chased pigeons around a statue of Kayda in her coronation robes, her craggy, regal face perpetually stained with bird shit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Today was a different scene entirely, though. For the first time Roman could remember, the statue was gone, replaced with a small makeshift stage, a podium atop it. It was a strange, four-layered sandwich: What seemed like the entire district filled in the majority of the Square, separated from the band of guards by a levitating ring of rope, and in the midst of it all floated Senator Moon, perched primly on the stage. She was wearing a powder blue suit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman folded himself into the outer portion of the citizens, craning his neck in order to get a better view. He was late— her speech already underway, hands held in front of her and slicing the air with deliberate gestures. Her voice had to have been magiqually magnified, as it carried over the hum and bustle of the city with supernatural ease.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tried to focus on the speech, but it was so </span>
  <em>
    <span>dull</span>
  </em>
  <span>, a litany of empty statements proclaiming her </span>
  <em>
    <span>love</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>dedication</span>
  </em>
  <span> for the Rivers and all its people. Roman guessed she was trying to maintain her standing by pissing off as few people as possible. He wished he knew what the constituents surrounding him were thinking. Whether they trusted her, if they believed what she was saying or even understood it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Due to all those months he’d spent poring over transcripts and op-eds with his brother, Roman knew how to craft a political speech. Maybe that was the reason why Moon rankled at him so. She spoke well, and whoever wrote it did that well, too. But underneath that, it was like everything that came from within the embrace of the Capitol’s ornate iron gates: Unblemished and lovely, but hollow inside. Roman knew, with an iron certainty, that it would shatter like glass, if only he was close enough to get a hit in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The anger that had cooled off into a dull thrum now flared up again at the sound of Moon’s loud, clear voice rattling off words like “hard times” and “best interests”. She moved on from her shopping list of ‘thank you’s to various lower-ranking officials and workers onto…  fiscal matters. Roman had to give her some credit. At least she bothered to address it. He forced himself to tune in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All of us,” she was saying, “Are working tirelessly to come up with solutions to not only maintain, but improve, the Rivers’ economic well-being. I am confident that our plans will be able to propel us into a new age of prosperity, though we will of course hold town halls to receive your suggestions and take them into account—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman thought to himself, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Well, why don’t you take resources from those who can actually afford it</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and then before he had even come to the end of that mental sentence he was taking a very deep breath and screaming as loud as he could, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>TAX THE CAPITOL!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A primal part of his brain responded with an empathetic ‘HIDE’ and he ducked into the doorway of a small souvenir shop and pretended to be flipping through a stack of postcards, pulse rocketing into high gear. What seemed like the entire crowd shifted around to look in the direction, murmurs running like fault lines under the cobbled street. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fuck. Wouldn’t it be just his luck if even one stodgy Fatherlandist had seen Roman open his big fat mouth and stormed in to drag him into the center of the mob. But nobody’s eyes came into contact with him for more than a millisecond before sliding past.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman’s heart was still pounding so hard that he felt like it was going to beat clean out of his chest and spill out onto the floor, which would of course be a dead giveaway of his guilt. He reached up to press his hand to it and instead found the warm, smooth weight of the ward Deceit had given him, humming contentedly against his flushed skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just his luck, indeed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peering out through the sliver of window visible from behind a stack of novelty stuffed otters in colorful sweaters, Roman watched as Moon cleared her throat a few times and doggedly continued with her speech, expression even and unbothered. Even with the amplification charm, though, she had to raise her voice to be heard over the chatter that was rapidly building (“Your input is of the utmost importance to me—”).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman was so, so dumb. He could envision Em’s disappointed frown, Remus’ delighted cackling, and even Logic’s scowl— Though he didn’t have to care about that one anymore, he reminded himself. He had set one task for himself, not an hour earlier: Be smart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman should’ve known it would go something like this. But he couldn’t help it, or the beginnings of a smile that now floated onto his face, unbidden. He had just been so </span>
  <em>
    <span>mad</span>
  </em>
  <span>. If he had less riding on his continued existence, he would have shoved Moon off that fucking stage and given everybody in the vicnity a piece of his mind. As it was, well, maybe a few people had something new to think about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was preparing to slink out of the shop and disappear down the first street he came across when he was stopped dead in his tracks, barely a meter away from the store entrance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From all the way across the Square, another voice— a familiar voice— had just yelled something back.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Janus was going to lose his fucking mind. He was going to pass out, right here and immediately, and nobody would even notice, and Heart and Prince were going to have to return to the Nolands without him and for the second time in his sorry eighteen years of existence, he would be presumed dead by all the most important people in his life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tried to calm his breathing, wishing he was better at shrinking spells so he could dwindle himself to the size of a cicada and hopefully get crushed to death by a wayward boot. Somehow, after walking for what felt like days, he had ended up in the Square, the place in the world that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>least</span>
  </em>
  <span> wanted to be. And he still had no clue where Heart was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Moon was talking but he was too keyed up to even attempt to pay attention. Her gaze raked across the crowd, eyes fixed just above the topmost heads, and in the split second her face turned towards his Janus felt his entire body collapse in on itself in an involuntary shudder. He knew that she was simply looking around during a pre-prepared pause to create the illusion of personal collection, and even if she </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> peering more closely, he was no more than a single wasp in a swarm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it </span>
  <em>
    <span>felt</span>
  </em>
  <span> like she </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and that she was looking for him and him alone, and that any second her eyes would swing back around and lock on his and she’d— What? Sic the Guard on him? Tell his father? Just stare, in disgust or in horror at all the ways he’d grown and changed and mangled? Pull him in by the shoulders and say, “Oh, Janus, baby, where have you been?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bridgitte, with the sharp eyes that squinted into reluctant smiles, her inky black hair longer than he remembered but lying coiled across her shoulders in the same way as ever. For the first time he saw her, truly saw her, as a politician and a commander, instead of as Remy’s mom. It was difficult to connect the image of this cutting, authoritative orator to that of the tired-faced woman leaning against the edge of her back porch, begging her seven-year-old child and that child’s best friend to come inside for dinner.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Twisting its claws within that childlike affection was that monstrous thing that ate him up inside while everyone else slept. When he lay on the couch and watched a stray moth zip in lazy rings around the footlights in the hallway, he could rest his hand on his chest and feel it, like a knot in his lungs, a hatred so strong it brushed against the brink of love.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were so many people on all sides of him, but he could only register Bridgitte. Her mouth was forming words but Janus had no clue what they were. He was too busy having a midlife crisis. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(He knew what Logic would say about that: “Are you planning to die at 36?” and then Janus would say, “I think that’s being generous, actually.”)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus hated this feeling, this smallness. He felt like sitting down and throwing a tantrum until somebody came to take it all away or give it all back. It was as if every time he started picking himself off the ground, something else swooped in to remind him how far he’d fallen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t take this anymore. He gave himself a hard mental shake, trying to smack his melancholy out of his head in lieu of doing so physically, and therefore drawing attention to himself. He was Janus Godfrey, god fucking damn it, and even though that didn’t mean anything to anybody anymore, it meant something to him. He wasn’t going to stand here feeling sorry for himself. He was going to get his shit together and buy some fucking canned fish and then he was going to go home and hide under a pile of blankets for the foreseeable future.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turned on his heel and was shoving through the crowd, using his pointy elbows to his advantage to ensure that he didn’t repeat his mistake of being “too nice”. The “Square” was like the center of a sunflower, with streets and alleys serving as the petals and extending outward. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t retrace his steps because he had no clue how he ended up here, but the nearest exit was a thin, dim passage, lined with slumping trash bags. At the other end, he could see the ebbing movement of shoppers in the main part of the Market.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The issue of navigation was an alarmingly prescient one. The Market was a banal, twisting hellscape, nothing like the precise gridding in the Capitol’s urban areas. It seemed to have been designed to deliberately bewilder and bewitch, with shifting streets and pockets of darkness that appeared out of nowhere in the ridges between buildings and gleamed with jagged teeth if you looked at them from specific angles. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus had a couple direction charms up his sleeve and a not entirely dysfunctional brain, so he figured he could work it out. Hopefully without having to talk to anybody else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was about a quarter of the way down the alley, gingerly picking his way around the pieces of litter scattered on the ground, when he heard someone scream, “TAX THE CAPITOL!”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What an imbecile</span>
  </em>
  <span>, thought Janus, then he registered the voice that had hollered as the same one that frequently snapped at him to move his stupid long-ass leg out of the path through the living room, and he realized that was the very imbecile he was currently supposed to be babysitting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The panic that had previously been wreaking havoc on his critical thinking skills parted, like the sun emerging from behind the clouds, and lo, it cast its light down from the Heavens and revealed the purest truth: Janus was the biggest fool to ever walk across this miserable, miserable earth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Why, oh why, would Janus trust Prince to stay put? In what universe would that obstinate bastard obey </span>
  <em>
    <span>anybody</span>
  </em>
  <span>, let alone him? Now he was going to have to helplessly watch the aftermath, and Heart was going to cry and Logic would do his “if I had emotions I would be upset” sighing thing, and it would all be deeply messy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus winced, peering out from between his fingers, half-expecting to see Prince shoved through the crowd and deposited at Bridgitte’s feet like a mouse corpse lovingly presented by a housecat. But nobody seemed to realize who had spoken. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The whispering rose like an impending tsunami, various necks angling towards the opposite end of the courtyard from Janus. Bridgitte’s eyes flashed, lips going tight with barely-perceptible annoyance as she plowed forward with her speech, and Janus, who had been tuning her out from the beginning, was now in good company. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This wasn’t Janus’ problem. Prince could incite whatever chaos he wanted, and that was on him. Janus was going to turn the hell around and leave Prince to do what he pleased with whatever remained of his life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except… It </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> kind of Janus’ problem, he realized with a queasy clench of his stomach, because Heart had made it his problem when he decided it would be jolly fun to knock out Prince and pack him into the car like a suitcase. Like it or not— and the answer was </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span>— Janus was part of a </span>
  <em>
    <span>team</span>
  </em>
  <span> now. Gone were the days when he only had to worry about saving his own ass, because now his ass was co-dependant on four other asses. To put it in a way more palatable to Janus’ personal sensibilities, Prince knew too much to be allowed to escape. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus’ mind churned wildly and spit out a single, terrible idea. Oh, well, he thought bitterly, may as well get a head start on that whole dying young business. Maybe he could even beat the family record for ‘most depressing death’, which would be </span>
  <em>
    <span>extra</span>
  </em>
  <span> fun considering that he currently held said record. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He muttered, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Amplifier</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” and cast his memory back to one of his early days with the group, making protest signs with Logic and Fear and laughing, trying to get paint on each other’s faces. The signs with the slogans that the others knew from having yelled, and that Janus knew from having been yelled at.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You take our oats, we take our vote,” Janus said, pitching his voice upward and spitting his t’s like a Plains kid. He spoke like he was directing the words at somebody beside him, but due to the charm he’d cast, it echoed out, loud and sharp and clear. He hoped Prince would know it was him, but that Bridgitte wouldn’t. It was a tricky line to toe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another wave of talking erupted, no longer confined to whispers. Janus stood very still and tried to think meditative thoughts to stave off the continuous anxiety attack that had been plaguing him for the past, oh, year or so. Fortunately, the dark shadows of the passage and the use of a muttered spell masked his presence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I promise—” Bridgitte started, outright shouting now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus knelt onto the pavement and began picking through the detritus spilling out of a black plastic garbage sack, folding his face into a grimace. He could almost </span>
  <em>
    <span>see</span>
  </em>
  <span> the filth seeping into his skin, but he forced himself to push down the itching feeling, and at last, his fingers brushed against a used popsicle stick, one end stained red by the memory of artificial fruit juice. Resolving to cut off his hand off as soon as they were back at the bloody cottage, he placed the stick flat on his palm and was halfway through the incantation when he was interrupted by an angry, raspy voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve been promising us shit for years, Moon!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His head snapped upward. That wasn’t Prince. It was someone else entirely. What’s more, a rumbling chorus of ‘YEAH’s echoed the statement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus scrambled to standing and pushed himself up onto his tiptoes, watching in fascination as Bridgitte cleared her throat, shaking her hands out by her sides in the same way Remy always did. The tension in her shoulders was visible, even from a distance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t want ideas, we want change!” Another stranger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t represent us!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Give us back our crops!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The crowd was churning like an ocean writhing in the throes of a storm. They bumped up against the rope, a single, angry creature, whining at the back door, begging to be let out with baleful eyes now narrowed, pacified thus long— but no more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bridgitte kept trying to talk, her head resolutely aloft and proud, like the way they were taught by balancing novels on the crown of the skull. She was used to the world quieting when she opened up her mouth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus knew this, because he had been too. The schadenfreude that rose up within him was more powerful than any commitment to justice he’d ever felt or faked. Janus felt a mean smile slink onto his face. No longer did he see a politician or a mother or a friend. He saw a scared, greedy, woman, who turned sour through no fault of her own but then made the choice to propagate it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus edged forward, slipping between two men in matching green jackets and re-folding himself into the arms of the flock. Everybody around him was too occupied with either screaming or listening to notice him as he balanced the grubby stick on his hand and muttered a few choice words at it, watching it as it began to spin like the hands on a broken clock, slowly at first, but then picking up speed. Focused as he was on his little enchantment, Janus didn’t spot the tomato until it was already very high in the sky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The gasp of a young woman beside him prompted him to glance upwards, and his eyes found it immediately: A bright blot dangling above the top of the crowd, contrasting artfully against the blue sky. It seemed to hang there for a long, breathless moment, then fell, swift and straight as a cricket ball, with a slight backspin, and exploded onto Bridgitte’s 400-brillant suit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With that, all hell broke loose. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The protective spell that encircled Bridgitte and her spindly makeshift stage snapped in two as whichever Guard that had cast it lost concentration. There was a sickening thump as the fat coil of rope hit the floor, and then the drove of people was thrusting forward, surrounding the platform, plowing past the members of the Guard trying desperately to hold them back. Bridgitte shrieked, leaping backward and kicking as a hand darted out to grab her ankle. Her loafer flew into the crowd and was instantly intercepted by an upward-extended arm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus angled his shoulders forward to hide the popsicle stick in his palm from view, and pinned it down with his other pointer finger. The stained end of the piece of wood was pointing due North, and it trembled in his hand, straining like a dog on a too-short leash. With difficulty, he followed its directions, pushing through the squirming mass of people, angling his steps to the left or the right depending on how the stick swiveled. Suddenly, it gave a particularly vicious jerk forward. Janus looked up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Found you!” said Prince, looking suspiciously excited to see him considering that he had given Janus the slip and stolen his money not two hours prior. Target located, the popsicle stick broke away from Janus and flung itself at Prince. It bounced off his chest and landed with an unheard </span>
  <em>
    <span>tap</span>
  </em>
  <span> against the ground, inanimate once more. Prince didn’t seem to notice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, thank god,” Janus sighed, sounding far too warm for his own comfort. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” There, that was better.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s honestly your fault for leaving me alone,” Prince pointed out, which was true but really didn’t need to be said. Then he winced and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Look, we should probably talk—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The latter half of his statement was drowned out by the now-familiar sound of screaming. While Janus was distracted, the Guards had managed to surround Bridgitte and were now off the platform, propelling her towards the mouth of the largest avenue leading away from the Square. They seemed more focused on getting Bridgitte out than on the crowd itself, evidenced by the multiple shielding spells that encased the huddle in a bubble ten feet in diameter and glowing faintly pink. People and objects alike bounced off the barrier like tossed racquetballs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The yelling had solidified into a singular chant. A small group of young people had taken over the stage, and together they shouted, “You take our oats—!” leaving a pause for the other assembled denizens to finish the phrase, which they did with great gusto. Janus felt proud to be a trendsetter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe not here,” Janus suggested, and Prince nodded. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Follow me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This wasn’t one of Janus’ favorite ideas ever, but no other options were presenting themselves, so he shadowed Prince as he navigated the crowd with way more ease and confidence than Janus had. After a couple minutes, they emerged onto a pleasantly quiet side street. Prince guided him down the road until the noise of the mob receded into a mere buzz, and then he plopped down on the curb in front of a post office.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus gingerly took a seat beside him, drawing his knees towards his chest and resting the side of his face on his upper arm. That voice in the back of his head that tsk-ed like his mother made a scathing comment on his posture, but he didn’t have the energy to give a shit. The abrupt lull in chaos brought his awareness to the exhaustion settling wet and heavy against his spine. His body and brain both had been running in frightened circles for hours, and now his eyes felt gummy and strained, like the biological workings behind his corneas had been plucked out and replaced with cotton. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hoped he and Prince weren’t hurtling toward yet another argument. It was an indication of his current stress levels that even the prospect of a solid round of bickering brought him no joy. Janus doubted he could muster the presence of mind to come up with one blithe yet appropriately devastating quip, yet alone a conversation’s worth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The two of them weren’t touching, but they were close enough to each other that Janus could feel the waves of motion as Prince bounced his leg up and down. He was apparently incapable of sitting still for more than a second at a time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The silence dragged on. Was Prince waiting for </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> to say something? From the way he was folding his hands over themselves in his lap, brow knitted in thought, he could’ve been preparing a speech of his own. Or deciding which pressure point to target in order to incapacitate Janus most efficiently. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Here,” Prince said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus refocused his attention to find him holding out two halves of a smushed sweet roll, one in each hand. He hesitated, but took it, and then a delicate bite. It was extremely sweet, and a little dense for his taste, but the act of eating cleared his mind and made him feel a lot more human. Prince, who had all but stuffed the entire piece into his mouth at once, watched with bemusement and a distended cheek as Janus nibbled around the edge, working inward.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You eat like a bird,” Prince said, once he had swallowed his mouthful in a single huge gulp, like a snake sliding a rat down its gullet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I eat like a civilised person,” Janus retorted, licking syrup off his fingers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince snorted, but then his face fell back into its previous pensivity. He scuffed the ground with the worn bottom of his sneaker and sent a loose pebble tumbling into the street. “Do you remember that photo I showed you back at Edgepike Manor?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince didn’t so much ‘show him’ as he did ‘territorially rip it out of Janus’ hands’, but nonetheless: “Yes, I remember.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s of me and my brother,” Prince said. He was carefully studying his hands. “He’s seven years older than me, so twenty-four, now. He left a year or so ago to go get a job in the city and then he never came back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus wasn’t sure if he should respond to that. He would nod— nods were very handy, socially— but Prince still wasn’t looking at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you’re trying to find him,” Janus filled in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.” Prince chewed at the inside of his cheek. “And, you know, being stuck in the Nolands doesn’t actually make it easy to do that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then why did you come back?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince sighed and looked at Janus at last. His face always seemed to twist itself into the most extreme version of a given emotion, but now he appeared unusually melancholy. It matched the evening which had begun to settle in, dripping down amid the buildings like a blanket tossed atop a configuration of chairs and slowly sinking into the gaps between them. What remained of the soft sunlight bathed the street in a gentle gold glow, making everything look ethereally beautiful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unfortunately, that included Prince. Janus averted his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I realized that it probably doesn’t make a difference,” Prince admitted. “If he wanted to be found, wouldn’t he have been already? He could be anywhere.” Or nowhere. “And then what, I’m just running around in circles and not going anywhere or getting anything done, and—” He hesitated, and peered intently at Janus’ face, as if looking for something. “Well, I could be wrong, but I think… I think we want the same thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stared at each other for a long moment. Prince kept lifting his eyebrows as if trying to underscore a point that he had not, in fact, made. Janus did not speak eyebrow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“To destroy the current system of government,” said Prince.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A family?” guessed Janus at the same time, then, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>WHAT</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince pouted. “You don’t want to destroy the government?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” Janus hissed. “Well, obviously </span>
  <em>
    <span>yes</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but that’s secondary.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“To a </span>
  <em>
    <span>family</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Prince bit down a smile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop laughing at me!” Janus snapped, shrinking back into the collar of his shirt. He was officially banning himself from human interaction. Maybe he should run away and go live in the woods. Oh, wait, already tried that one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not laughing at you!” said Prince, laughing at him. “Sorry, It’s just… you’re not really all that scary, are you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You thought I was </span>
  <em>
    <span>scary</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Janus asked, incredulous.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know.” Prince shrugged. “You can do magique. And you’re a dick.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus stepped on his foot and ground his heel in for good measure. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>You're</span>
  </em>
  <span> a dick.” He protectively scooted his own feet onto the left side of his body, out of the way of Prince’s outstretched leg.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve decided I don’t hate you anymore,” Prince informed him after a couple more minutes of foot-stomp-tag, which Janus badly lost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks,” said Janus flatly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That doesn’t mean I like you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t like you either,” Janus said. It was one thing to start an anti-Senate demonstration with someone. It was another thing to make embroidery-floss bracelets together or whatever it is people did with their friends. Janus’ past and present friendships alike were more of the ‘fondly strangle each other with embroidery floss’ type. Perhaps that was a bad sign about the sort of person he was. He lifted his chin at Prince. “I’m not opposed to having my mind changed. But you’re going to have to work for it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll take that as a challenge.” He stuck out a hand. “Maybe-kind-of-not-really friends?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus made a face. “Something like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They shook on it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The clattering of approaching footsteps startled Janus out of the moment. Prince dropped his hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There you are!” It was Heart, all but bursting out of a fabric shop across the street and bounding towards them like a tall, broad-shouldered, anxious puppy. His face was drawn, but softened with relief upon spotting them. He dropped to his knees on the cobblestone and pulled them into a smothering double-armed hug. Prince let out a quiet choking noise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus patted the large, warm arm currently infringing upon his breathing capability and managed to gasp, “It’s okay, Heart, we’re fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart detached himself with a guilty smile and began examining them for signs of damage. Janus wondered if this was what it was like to be an antique teacup. “What happened? What were you thinking?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus tried and failed to suppress a grimace, wilting slightly at the prospect of the verbal beat-down he was going to endure back at the cottage. But, alas, he couldn’t lie his way out of </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The truth, for once, would have to do. “Sorry,” he sighed, “It was my f—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Idea,” said Prince.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus whipped around to stare at him so quickly his neck cracked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We were talking about Moon, and how messed up it is that people don’t really know what’s happening, and, um, you know, things kind of… snowballed?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart put his hands on his hips and fixed them with a disappointed, decidedly parental frown. It was disconcerting, to say the least. “Deceit, it was your idea?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” said Janus.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you mad?” Prince whispered, blinking up at Heart, eyes huge and innocent. Janus tried not to laugh as Heart melted at the display. The pout, combined with Prince’s general air of scruffy, ‘ADOPT ME!’ haplessness, was sending Heart into hysterics.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now teary-eyed, he reached over and patted Prince full on the face. From underneath Heart’s hand, which was about the size of his head, he shot Janus a despairing look. “I’m just glad everybody is okay,” Heart said thickly, “But we’ll talk to Logic and Fear about it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear was more likely to be disappointed that everybody </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> okay. As for Logic— Well, at least Janus was pretty sure he wasn’t going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>kill</span>
  </em>
  <span> them. Sit at the kitchen table for a few hours with his head in his hands and sigh passive aggressively, maybe. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was a little cool, though, wasn’t it?” Janus pointed out. If he was going to be accused of purposely starting the political demonstration that he accidentally started, he may as well get some validation about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was very cool!” Heart said angrily. “You both are so dumb and I love you so much!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” said Prince, sounding touched. “Can we go home now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They followed Heart and the rest of the crowd down onto the main street and towards the empty dirt-packed lot in which various cars, motorcycles, and other makeshift vehicles were crammed together into rows. The market’s energy had faded into a dull buzz, the colorful pennant banners hung between the lamp-posts flapping lazily in the chill breeze. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The streetlamps switched on, bright white spheres popping out of the dusk one by one until the entire city was pockmarked with light, like someone had taken to it with a melon baller and carved out curlicue spoons of darkness. People loaded their purchases into trunks and bicycle baskets and wagons tied sidelong to mopeds by rope, and parents buckled their children’s helmets for them, and the kids looked up into their eyes with round, soft faces, and knew that mother would not snip their chin with the clasp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus let his strides slow, drawing about a meter back from Heart, and snagged the sleeve of Prince’s t-shirt to pull them into step together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks for covering for me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks for covering for </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Prince said, and bumped their shoulders together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Janus shrugged. “If they knew you tried to run I doubt they’d continue to trust you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An expression of evil delight dawned upon and subsequently ruined Prince’s perfect, angelic, bone structure. “Does that mean </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> trust me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait,” Janus said, “Wait, no, not necessarily—” but Prince was already beaming.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No take backs!” he sang, and started running, and Janus said, “Why you—” and, under the filmy orange sky, he chased the plumes of dirt floating up around and behind the scuff of Prince’s sneakers all the way down the path to the truck.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The team argues... but what else is new? Prince stirs the pot, Logic schemes, Fear almost crashes the truck, and I finally get to write some action!</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ah hello I am terribly sorry about how long it's been! I had five weeks of online APUSH and forgot how to write fiction.</p><p>Warnings: Violence, guns, implied violence WITH guns, and a couple of gross similes</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The door to the cottage slammed open on its hinges and in traipsed Heart, Deceit, and Prince, looking tired, tired, and pleased, respectively. Logan set down his screwdriver. For better or for worse, he could tell this was going to require his full attention. Heart stumbled over to the kitchen, dropped his share of the bags on the counter with a loud thump, and keeled over with a groan to rest his cheek against the cool grey tile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear glanced up from the multicolored ball he was making out of various scraps of twine and raised an eyebrow at him. “Heart, bud, you doin’ alright?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have good news and bad news,” Heart announced. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan glanced over at his peers (if one based that distinction on age and not intellect) and found them overly focused on arranging the rest of the bags into an aesthetically pleasing pile west of the coffee table. He sighed. “Bad news first, please.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Unfortunately, they’re the same news,” Heart said. “Prince and Deceit started a riot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan inhaled and counted to seven, one of the grounding exercises that his former therapist had taught him. Despite the unfortunate fact that said shrink turned out to be a government informant practising under a forged university degree, she had given some helpful tips. “You what,” Logan said, calmly, at a perfectly normal volume.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A </span>
  <em>
    <span>small</span>
  </em>
  <span> riot,” Prince clarified.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, thank god for that, you have successfully eliminated all my concerns!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The story came out in bits and pieces, and once it was over, Fear cackled for a solid minute and solemnly shook hands with both Prince and Deceit, who played along with varying degrees of enthusiasm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, goddamnit, Fear,” Logan hissed. “This is not a handshake situation.” How dare he tarnish the emotional gravity of a good handshake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come on, Logic,” Fear groaned. He was leaning his elbows on the back of the couch and messing with Deceit’s white-blond hair, pushing in the opposite direction of its usual part. The unwilling other participant of this game then reached up to smoothen it, and Fear tousled it again, and the cycle repeated itself. “Nobody saw them and nobody got hurt. I thought you were all for this kind of shit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan crossed his arms. “If by ‘this kind of shit’ you mean a horrifying cocktail of reckless endangerment and dumb luck, then no, I am not for it. I approve of the message, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>would</span>
  </em>
  <span> approve of the action if it was appropriately planned to ensure sufficient safety.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From the look on Prince’s face, he had only heard the words “I approve”.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Time to change tactics. Logan turned a glare on Deceit. It was an excellent glare, but Deceit unfortunately had the most experience with Logan’s glares, and was slowly but surely building up immunity. “Deceit, I expected better of you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why the fuck would you do that?” asked Deceit, trying to swat Fear’s hands away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan ratcheted up the glare a notch, taking it into “scowl” territory. Deceit recoiled a couple inches, and let out an annoyed noise, tossing his head back over the top of the couch and accidentally knocking Fear in the ribs. “Whatever, </span>
  <em>
    <span>fine</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Logic, next time I want to start a public disturbance I’ll run it by you first. Happy?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, never,” said Logan. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart winced. “Let’s not have a next time.” He shook out his shoulders as if trying to discard the worries of the day, and wagged an accusing finger at Prince and Deceit, who were sitting-side-by-side on the couch. “You two scared the living daylights out of me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They both offered identical unrepentant shrugs, and Logan watched, with mounting horror, as Prince held out his fist towards Deceit who stared for a moment, then reached out and hesitantly bumped it with his own. Logan sent a silent apology to the universe for all the times he swore up and down that there could be nothing worse than their incessant squabbling. He took it back. He took it all back. The possibility of teamwork loomed on the horizon, grinning and sinister, alongside the distant, warped soundtrack of Kumbaya. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps Logan’s eventual fame would not stem from his role in the restoration of democracy to their nation, but in fact by way of becoming the first-ever person to go completely grey at nineteen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, come on,” Fear said, rolling his eyes at Heart. “Hanging out and baking bread is cute and all, but it’s been forever since we’ve actually done anything fun.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or impactful,” Logan added, because ‘fun’ really was not the operative here, or at least it should not have been. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right, that too,” said Fear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re both right, of course.” Heart sighed. “It just makes me a little… jittery. Ever since the last time we—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Heart,” Fear warned, jerking his chin in Prince’s direction with a total lack of subtlety.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, don’t let me get in your way,” Prince said, propping his chin in his hand and blinking demurely. “Just pretend I’m not here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit let out a loud huff of breath. “This is ridiculous,” he declared. “You’d have to be utterly braindead to </span>
  <em>
    <span>still</span>
  </em>
  <span> think this is a merry little camping trip between friends. Let’s fill him in and save everybody the trouble.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Things used to be so nice, Logan thought wistfully, back when Deceit was still intimidated by him. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Not denying</span>
  </em>
  <span> a hunch is one thing, </span>
  <em>
    <span>confirming</span>
  </em>
  <span> it is another. I for one am not eager to trust him solely for the sake of convenience.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t talk about Prince like he’s not here,” said Heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, please do,” said Prince, watching the exchange with interest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I trust him,” Deceit offered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everybody turned to stare at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You do?” said Heart, Logic, and Fear together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span>!” chirped Prince.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit’s cheeks went a ruddy red. “What? Shut up. Why is that weird?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” said Heart, “We sort of got the impression you hated him?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hate all of you,” Deceit snapped, which was such a blatant lie Logan was almost impressed by the gall of it, “But I still trust you not to turn me in.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan ran through the pros and cons, tapping his knuckles on the tabletop. The brown skin of his hands almost exactly matched the dark varnished mahogany, he noted with an absent sense of bemusement amid his otherwise churning thoughts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing about this situation was ideal, but the close quarters ensured it would only become more and more difficult to conceal any unsavoury activities. Besides, if they allowed Prince to at least believe he was informed, it might lessen his inclination towards snooping. Logan wasn’t confident on that last point, but it was better than nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine,” he conceded, “Congratulations, Prince. Welcome to the rebellion.”</span>
</p><p>“Yes!” Prince jumped to his feet and pumped his fist in the air. “I fucking knew it! Man, you guys are really bad at keeping secrets.”</p><p>
  <span>“More like you’re just incredibly nosy,” Fear said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>During the ensuing bicker-fest, Heart made his way over to the table and leaned over Logan’s shoulder to peer at the various gadgets and detritus scattered across the surface. He picked up Logan’s current project— the gutted hunk of metal that had once been a transistor radio and would, with luck, soon be one again— and turned it over gingerly in his hands. “This is cool, Logic. What’s it for?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” said Logan, and took it away from him, ignoring the second half of the query. After a few seconds of puzzled scrambling, Logan unearthed his screwdriver from underneath a mountain of fabric scraps. “First order of business,” he announced to the room at large. “All of you can help us go through the materials collected from Edgepike Manor.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince bounded across the room in a second flat and plopped himself into the seat right beside Logan, scooting his chair slightly closer than what Logan viewed as respectable. Heart and Fear sat down as well, but Deceit stayed put on the couch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>tired</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he whined. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And apparently, you’re also five years old,” Logan said. “It’s nine-thirty.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your parents let you go to bed past nine when you were </span>
  <em>
    <span>five</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Heart frowned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I set my own sleep schedule from age three onward.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How are we supposed to sort it?” Prince asked, reaching for a fizzling lantern that periodically spit pink sparks out of its cracked glass window. Logan batted his hand away. “Are there categories? What are you going to use it all for?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“One at a time, Wonderboy,” Fear sighed. He pointed to the three plastic trash bags on the floor up beside the armchair nearest to the kitchen. “Keep, sell, chuck,” he explained, pointing to each one in turn. “The stuff we haven’t gone through yet is down here.” He kicked the bag under the table with a dull thwack. “Knock yourself out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’ll be easier to explain as we go,” Heart added from beneath the table, over the various clanking, jangling, and rustling as he rifled through the rubble. “So if you have any questions, feel free to ask!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think you should give him that much power,” Deceit offered, still on the couch. He had removed his shoes and cocooned himself within the fluffy pink blanket reserved for Bad Moods, so Logan decided to let him be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart reappeared, brandishing what looked like a silver candlestick. “What’s this?” he asked, frowning at it. Deceit was on his feet and across the room in a flash, reaching over to snatch it out of Heart’s grasp at the same time Prince dove across the table for it. Heart stood up and held it above his head, out of reach of both of them. “Whoa, there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s mine!” Prince said. “Give it!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s an artefact, Heart!” Deceit climbed onto a chair and took a few fruitless swipes at the candlestick, pausing as if considering the strategic merits of a flying leap. Heart took a few protective steps back. “You think </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span> can handle it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear laid a hand on Prince’s shoulder and pushed him back down into his seat. “What do you mean it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>yours</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was my uncle’s.” Prince’s gaze remained affixed to the metallic object in Heart’s hands, like a dog honing in on a scrap of meat. “I didn’t have time to grab it when we left the Manor, since I was, you know, unconscious and stuffed into a car. Remember that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Heart whimpered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t you apologize,” Fear said, “That was the best thing you’ve ever done.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan frowned. “Why would you bother to take a candlestick on your little… cross-country rescue mission?” Prince screwed up his face into a wince and looked away. Something clicked. “You knew it was an artefact.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I suspected,” Prince admitted, and threw up his hands defensively at the four horrified stares that were now aiming themselves at him. “Guys, c’mon! I mean, I </span>
  <em>
    <span>can</span>
  </em>
  <span> do a little magique, sometimes, I thought it might… help?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you know how dangerous that is?” Deceit growled. “You’re already so </span>
  <em>
    <span>volatile</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you’re lucky you didn’t blow yourself up into a million bloody chunks every time you stubbed your toe!” Prince flinched at that mental image.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit whirled on Heart, clasping his hands together beneath his chin in a caricature of plaintiveness. His eyes were gleaming, vacant and hungry, and he wore a look of desperation Logan had never seen on him before. It hung off his bent back like an ill-fitting shirt as he prowled forward, his steps audible in the now-silence. “Heart, please, I need it. I’m an illusionniste, I’m trained. You know my magique would be </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span> much stronger if I didn’t have to power it all myself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart bit his lip. “I don’t know…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Deceit has a point,” Logan cut in. The open, bitter desire on Deceit’s face unsettled him, but the idea of leaving Deceit weaker and more vulnerable than he had to be unsettled him more. He remembered those helpless, guilty nights, the crying and the shaking and the dead way Deceit’s white, veiny hand had tightened around Logan’s forearm, stiff as the mouth of a vise and twice as cold, and from the looks on Heart and Fear’s faces, he knew they were remembering them, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We rely far too heavily on his abilities as it is,” he continued. “It would be foolish to deny him the extent of his power.”</span>
</p><p><span>“But it wouldn’t be </span><em><span>his</span></em> <em><span>power</span></em><span>,” Prince shouted. “It’s mine, and it’s my family’s, and it’s the only thing I have left from them.”</span></p><p>
  <span>That was a well-played card. Heart’s eyes doubled in size and took on that doleful quality that usually signaled he was thinking about and/or gazing at some sort of small helpless woodland creature. Deceit glanced between the two of them, sensing that the balance of the conversation was tipping away from his favor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That doesn’t matter,” he said quickly. “I can still tether to it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I won’t let you!” Prince stood once more and stalked over to place himself between Deceit and Heart, until he and the former were almost toe-to-toe. He shoved Deceit in the center of the chest and sent him stumbling backwards. “You’re so </span>
  <em>
    <span>selfish</span>
  </em>
  <span>!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And you’re fucking stupid,” Deceit spat. “You don’t know what it’s like to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>Empty</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince’s chin wobbled. For a moment, Logan thought he would break, then it stilled and his face settled back into its veneer of defiance. He opened his mouth to fire back a retort, lip curling into a snarl.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Having picked his side, Logan prepared to tune out the rest of the fight. He would return to the conversation once everybody calmed down, as an outwardly neutral party, and patch things back together. It wouldn’t make a difference if he tried to mediate now— It was always like this with them. When they got into their heads it was as if they were the only two people in the room. Logan recalled, with a somewhat hysterical amusement, their affable fist-bump mere minutes prior. At least his fears of an unstoppable friendship were for naught. The universe </span>
  <em>
    <span>did</span>
  </em>
  <span> have a sense of humor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can’t you… share it?” offered Heart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a pause.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Forgive me,” said Logan, “For my admitted lack of knowledge about magiqual matters, but from what I’ve gathered, that’s… not how it works.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s the </span>
  <em>
    <span>opposite</span>
  </em>
  <span> of how it works.” Deceit was fixing his hair and visibly trying to regain control of his temper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But do you have to tether it to use it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit hesitated. “No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And Prince, are you already tethered?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince looked at the floor. “Not… properly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heart clapped his hands together. “Perfect. The two of you can have joint ownership. I’m sure it will be a help in Prince’s magique lessons.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No one looked happy, but Deceit and Prince returned to the table and sat. It was less a decision than a postponement of one, but Logan told himself that he had to pick his battles— or at least the dates on which he fought them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He caught Deceit’s eye and mouthed, ‘I’ll fix this.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit only shook his head and sighed, resigned, the fight lapsing out of him. He looked once again like himself: weary and scrawny and sad. Logan knew it was irrational to feel protective of Deceit, considering they were the almost same age and that he could hex all of Logan’s bones in half if he was so inclined. Still… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan turned his attention back to his radio, using the tip of the screwdriver to examine the multicolored sets of wires that trailed down the left hand side of the internal chamber. About half of them were broken, with blunt edges signalling that they had been cut. Fear was showing Prince how to sharpen a pocket-knife, and Deceit was listlessly swirling his fingers through a tin of batteries, a lackluster parody of productivity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were certain rules that had to be followed, debts that had to be paid. Heart’s dedication to the brand of ‘fairness’ in which </span>
  <em>
    <span>everybody</span>
  </em>
  <span> was equal, regardless of their objective value, always left a sour taste in Logan’s mouth. Sometimes ‘fair’ wasn’t everybody getting the same thing. Sometimes it was everybody getting as much as they deserved.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>“Hello, Prince,” Logan said mildly, and then looked up from his book to relish in the satisfaction of watching Prince blanch, hovering in the open doorway like an oversized, sheepish hummingbird.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How did you know it was me?” he said. He was still in his pajamas, despite it being almost midday, and cradling a book of his own to his chest. Even if the cover had been visible, that was no guarantee that Logan would recognize it. There were a ridiculous amount of books in the cottage and Prince seemed to have made it his personal mission to slog his way through the lot of them, a feat which even Logan hadn’t managed. Logan and Fear had a small bet going on how long it would take for him to give up, and unfortunately for Logan and his hatred of dishwashing duty, Prince seemed to be resolutely plowing forward.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Heart wouldn’t bother to be quiet, Deceit always knocks, and Fear knows that the board there creaks.” He pointed to the strip of wood in question and Prince jerked his socked foot off it as if it burned him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s fucking freaky, man,” he whined, crossing the room and throwing himself onto Fear’s bed, which was an ill-judged choice in Logan’s opinion. But hey, his prerogative. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan watched as Prince got comfortable, scooting back until his spine pressed against the wall and folding his legs into a criss-cross position. He then lay the book flat onto the bed in front of him, rifled through it until he found the appropriate page, about a third of the way in, and settled in to read.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This pleasantly overcast Sunday morning was one of the rare occasions Logan had to tap into something for his own personal pleasure. The even, black text detailing the sordid history of the neo-magiqual industrialization beckoned, but he suddenly found he couldn’t focus on it. Damnit, he thought after a few minutes of re-reading the same three sentences. If he wanted to properly savor his precious hours with the love of his life, also known as </span>
  <em>
    <span>Magique &amp; Machinery: Annotated Edition</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he would have to get his curiosities taken care of. He shut the cover loudly and Prince jolted and looked up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you want?” Logan asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince batted his eyelashes at him. “Aw, Logic, can’t a guy want to spend some time with his acquaintance-slash-housemate-slash-boss? We never talk anymore.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We never talk, period.” Unless it was about literature, though when Prince wanted to share an Artemisia Proudscream theory, he usually preferred to sit down and launch straight into a monologue, leaving Logan to drag himself away from whatever he was doing to scramble after Prince’s convoluted train of thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, we don’t have to,” Prince shrugged. “We can just read in silence, if that’s what you want. Does that sound nice?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It does, thank you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince gave him a thumbs up. “Cool.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cool,” Logan parroted, and squinted at Prince, who squinted back. They held that position for a few long moments, and then Prince’s eye twitched. Logan tracked the movement, paused, and raised one eyebrow. Prince cracked instantly, the mask of cool indifference sliding off to reveal a petulant frown. Logan gave himself an internal pat on the back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine!” Prince threw his hands in the air with an exaggerated sigh. “There is something I wanted to… bring up with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan folded his hands over the smooth, thready blue cover of his book. “Do tell.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It has to do with what we talked about, before. At the meeting?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An involuntary spike of </span>
  <em>
    <span>something </span>
  </em>
  <span>shot its way up Logan’s spine. Annoyance? Embarrassment? The “house meeting” from two days prior, ostensibly to discuss their next move, had turned out to be nothing short of a farce. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince had kept asking about what they had done so far, what they had accomplished, so many prickly, buzzing questions, when why what what </span>
  <em>
    <span>what</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It didn’t sound like a lot when Fear listed it out in that bored drawl of his, the protests they’d attended and started, the low-grade vandalism and thievery…  and okay, fine, it </span>
  <em>
    <span>wasn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> a lot, but they were playing the long game. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Logan</span>
  </em>
  <span> was playing the long game.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t disappointment in Prince’s voice when he said, measured and polite, “Is that all?” it was more like— oh, Logan should just give up in trying to identify others’ emotions. It stung the same no matter what word you put to it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Furthermore, they couldn’t come up with any fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>ideas</span>
  </em>
  <span>. With gritted teeth and a hand too-tight around his favorite blue ballpoint, Logan had duly scribbled down every inane suggestion, every half-baked wish. The piece of paper in question, speckled with holes from when Logan pressed the nib down a little too hard, now hung in the kitchen, in case anyone had any epiphanies that needed notating. Of course, no one had. It wasn’t for an overabundance of caution that they had been lying low lately. At least when Prince had been out of the loop he had an excuse. Now, Logan had to admit it to himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were stuck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In his rare, introspective moments, he worried that he had bitten off more than he could chew. In his more frequent, angry moments, Logan resolved that the idiots around him lacked working jaws altogether, and would need to be force-fed the life experiences equivalent to bone broth. At risk of convoluting the metaphor, Logan was sick of being the spoon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah yes.” Logan nodded, pushing aside the bitter part of himself that would rather never talk to Prince about anything ever again. “Go ahead.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I had an </span>
  <em>
    <span>idea</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Prince said. He hesitated. Logan leaned forward half an inch, interest piqued. Of course </span>
  <em>
    <span>now</span>
  </em>
  <span> Prince decided to get shy. “I was thinking about the riot in the Market. There were a lot of people who were really, really angry with Moon. I feel like… You guys keep talking about what we want to accomplish in the end, right? But shouldn’t we start smaller?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan nodded. “Good point,” he said, failing to remove the traces of frustration from his tone. Prince was right, but it was nothing Logan hadn’t thought of before. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The other boy wasn’t finished, though, and after taking a huge gulp of air he plowed forwards as if Logan hadn’t spoken. “Instead of trying to, like, hurt the powers that be, maybe we could </span>
  <em>
    <span>help</span>
  </em>
  <span> the </span>
  <em>
    <span>people</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I’m sure you know about the grain tax—?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Obviously.” The implication of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>possibility</span>
  </em>
  <span> that Logan wouldn’t was, frankly, offensive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And I back when I lived in— Well, there are rumors they store the stuff they collect in those warehouses on the Rivers outskirts, and I seriously doubt they’re using it all, so what if…” He paused, meaningfully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve thought this through,” Logan realized, with a grudging jolt of admiration, as the rest of the pieces fell into place. It was… clever, certainly, but he hadn’t heard of the rumors that Prince mentioned, they’d have to look into that first. And there was the matter of distribution… Against his will, the beginnings of excitement and hope began to bubble and froth, slowly at first, and then rising to the edge of boiling over. A picture. A plan. His mind groped within itself and latched onto a feeling, something sharp and bright and impossible to ignore. It felt like stretching out an old, unused muscle, feeling that sweet resistance tug and flex beneath his skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince studied Logan’s expression for a moment before latching onto some unknown variable he saw there and visibly brightening. “Duh, yes. It’s been on my mind for a while.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why didn’t you say something at the meeting?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shrugged and picked at a loose string in Fear’s threadbare purple bedspread. “I didn’t want to step on any toes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan snorted. “When, pray tell, did you start caring about </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He made a despairing noise and flopped sideways so he was lying with his head at the foot of the bed and his socked feet propped up on the headboard. “I don’t know! It’s terrible! Something is definitely wrong with me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Besides the obvious?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘obvious’</span>
  </em>
  <span>?!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan paused and pretended to give Prince a thoughtful once-over. “The hair, for one.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The resulting shriek of offense was well-worth the pillow to the face Logan then received. It caught Logan mid-cackle, smacking his glasses back into the bridge of his nose. He lobbed it back at Prince, unable to keep the grin from his face even as his associate rolled out of the way so that the cushion hit the wall with a cheerful slap.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prince grinned smugly. “You lose, Logic.” The smile twisted into a mildly nervous cross-eye and his leg began to bounce. “Is it a good idea, though? Will it work?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan mulled it over. “Maybe,” he said. “We’ll have to discuss it as a group. There’s a lot of factors to consider.” Including some problems which fell onto Logan alone. He didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> to entertain the thought that there was more to Prince’s oh-so convenient suggestion than met the eye. But if nobody else was going to be skeptical— and nobody else was— then Logan would. That was his job. That was </span>
  <em>
    <span>Logic’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> job.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah, for sure,” Prince said quickly. “But… it’s possible, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear would’ve said, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Who knows? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Heart might insist, </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s more than possible!</span>
  </em>
  <span> And Deceit would roll his eyes and scoff, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sure, if you have a death wish.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan was not Fear, or Heart, or Deceit. At this moment, he was not even Logic. He was </span>
  <em>
    <span>Logan</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the boy, the brain, the brat, and Logan clung to the tattered scraps of a vision like a stray cat fought over fish bones. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so he said, “Yes,” more to himself than anything. His brain was whirring with such great zeal he barely registered Prince’s answering delighted whoop. He looked at the book in his lap. Magique and machinery. A system so complex and tied up within itself that it could be only understood— or dismantled— from within.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps there was something to that.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>It was a decidedly gloomy day, grey and wan with a thin but steady patter of rain against the tiled roof of the cottage. About fifteen minutes ago, Prince and Deceit had departed to the woods for a magique lesson, prompted by Prince’s endless begging for practical instruction and the hard and fast house rule of No Hexing Indoors. Heart had laid claim to the kitchen table to work on his newest knitting attempt that was, allegedly, a hat. Fear was nowhere to be seen, which meant Logan knew exactly where he was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He slunk out through the window of his bedroom with little effort and fell into a heap onto the mushy ground. Standing up to brush specks of soil off his battered olive-green coat, he tilted his head thoughtfully at the window gaping open-mouthed above him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alas, he was not tall enough to slam it shut from outside, so he would have to hope that any rain that fell through would not end up on either of his or Fear’s beds, pushed against opposite walls as they were. In the small room, ‘as far from the window as possible’ was still not very far.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After picking up the small backpack that had taken the dive before him, Logan strolled around the corner of the house and towards the thick knot of trees that marked his destination. It was a mere fifty paces away from the cottage, but the ill placement of several oaks and thorny thickets required him to take a longer, more looping route. He ducked under a branch and found himself in a small clearing, and as expected, there was Fear, sitting on a rock and whittling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear’s gaze darted in his direction for a split second, but he didn’t acknowledge Logan’s presence and continued to hack away at a chunk of wood with his pocket-knife, humming to himself. The blade was about the size of Logan’s index and middle fingers pressed together, and flashed in the weak sunlight as Fear directed it to mangle a perfectly nice log into something resembling an emaciated wolf. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Damnit, Logan thought. It was one of Logan’s most ardent goals to tap Fear’s shoulder from behind and get him to startle. It was beginning to seem that the day would never come and Logan would die unfulfilled (and probably young, knowing his lifestyle). Fear was like a hyper-sensitive alarm, always with one eye open, always on the qui vive. Logan might have better luck waltzing past the Senate Building’s security system. He sighed and then deliberately stepped on a twig.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> Fear looked up and blinked in false surprise. “Oh, hey, Logic.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello, Fear,” Logan nodded. “How is this fine morning treating you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cut the shit,” said Fear. “You want something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan rolled his eyes. Fear had no sense of drama. He had to do everything himself around here. He crossed the clearing in a few broad paces and shoved a makeshift ski mask fashioned from a floral bed sheet into his friend’s chest. “Gear up,” he instructed. “We’re going to go commit some victimless crime.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not that I’m not down,” Fear said, examining the mask with distaste, “But I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was thinking we might pay a visit to a certain Warehouse 26B,” Logan offered, as nonchalantly as he could manage, and paused to watch the recognition that dawned on Fear’s face. “Do a little scoping, perhaps?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear narrowed his eyes at Logan. “Isn’t this kind of a group project?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s just </span>
  <em>
    <span>recon—</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You still don’t trust Prince,” Fear cut him off, flatly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re correct, I don’t,” Logan admitted. “He has done nothing to earn it except be annoying, persistent, and in the vicinity.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear shrugged. “I like the kid. He’s got guts. And wasn’t this his idea?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Liking and trusting are different beasts,” Logan shot back. “We can’t be sure of his motivations. All of you are being extremely irresponsible.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And you, king of breaking-and-entering, are the </span>
  <em>
    <span>picture</span>
  </em>
  <span> of responsibility.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think I’m the king of breaking and entering?” Logan said, momentarily touched, before remembering the subject at hand. “Besides, this is </span>
  <em>
    <span>completely</span>
  </em>
  <span> different!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If that’s what helps you sleep at night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine,” Logan huffed, folding his arms and whirling on his heel towards the gap in the trees from whence he came, “If you’re out, you’re out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Obviously</span>
  </em>
  <span> I’m in,” said Fear, shoving the mask into the pocket of his leather jacket and falling into step beside Logan. “Are we taking the truck?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Unless you want to walk all the way to the Rivers.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright, no need to be smart about it,” Fear grumbled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cottage emerged into view once more and together they followed the familiar route around its weathered perimeter and into the section of forest running parallel to the front entrance. There was no true trail, only the tamped-down sections of grass and brightly colored handkerchiefs knotted around the tree branches that lined their usual route.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thick swampiness of the forest necessitated that they park the truck about two miles out from the cottage, at the point where the bumpy dirt road that turned off from the highway between the Rivers and the Capitol cut off into nothingness. It was as if somebody had started building a path but gave up halfway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell me about this plan of yours,” Fear said as he ducked under a low-hanging branch, breaking the silence that had fallen on them for the past ten or so minutes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s fairly intuitive,” Logan explained between breaths. He prided himself on his carefully maintained physical condition, ideal for maximum productivity in most situations while still not sacrificing too much of his time, but Fear’s long legs set a brisk tempo that left Logan jogging in order to keep pace. “But it does rely on the veracity of certain assumptions, namely, a lack of security at the warehouse.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you don’t trust Prince enough to keep him in the loop, but you’re willing to bank our chances on what he claims.” Fear’s face stayed neutral, and Logan couldn’t tell if he was being passive-aggressive or just needling him for fun. Either way, he was on board, and that meant Logan didn’t give a shit about whatever else he was feeling. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, in short,” Logan said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear laughed at that, for some unknowable reason. “You’re fucking ruthless, kid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not a kid,” Logan corrected, dancing out of the way of a pat on the head and nearly tripping over a rock in the process. “And you’re only—” He paused and peered up at Fear’s face, looking for clues. “Twenty… four? No. Nine? Five? Seven?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Older than you.” Fear grinned, bumping Logan’s shoulder with the side of his arm. “That’s all that matters.” An expectant, wicked smile spread across the planes of his face. “Which means… I get driving privileges.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan scoffed. “Over my dead body.”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Fear drove. Logan’s dead body did not end up bearing witness to said event, but it was a near thing. After a harrowing journey during which Logan seriously considered leaping out the window to safety on more than one occasion, Fear slammed on the brakes and the truck screeched to a jolting halt behind a battered barn coated with peeling red paint, narrowly avoiding taking off the left-hand wing mirror.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan pressed a hand to his wrist to feel his thudding pulse. “I’m driving on the way back,” he said, once the whiplash and overall sensation dizziness diffused somewhat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t have a license,” Fear sang, stepping out of the car. His boots hit the pale packed earth with an audible thump.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yours got </span>
  <em>
    <span>revoked</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it doesn’t count.” Logan followed him out, using his hip to close the bulk of the car door. He positioned his hand against his forehead like a visor to better peer out at the barren landscape and the translucent skin of fog that hung over it. In the distance, a broad barbed wire fence jutted out from within the curtain the clouds like a shattered bone breaking through animal hide.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Logan didn’t know otherwise, he would’ve pegged this scene as taking place within the Plains. It was hard to believe that just beyond the boundary of the fence lay the characteristic cheerful, busy towns of the Rivers district.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The eerie stillness reminded him that despite the safety they found within the cottage and the surrounding marshland, the Nolands were treacherous territory. Nothing and no one, friend or foe, held jurisdiction here. You could kill a man, admit to it, and still flick it from your record like a stray piece of lint off a brand-new sweater. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where’s the warehouse?” Fear asked. He, too, was looking out at the terrain, his hands buried in his pockets and his shoulders drawn up to his ears, face drawn in apprehension mirroring Logan’s own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It must be on the other side of the barn,” Logan said. He glanced at the car beside him. It may have been old, but his care left it well-kept and shining, and the glossy sliver of the bumpers stuck out like a sore thumb. “Is it safe to leave the truck out here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear frowned, and then strode over to the barn. He walked up to the back entrance, criss-crossed by white planks, and stood on his tiptoes to snap open the rusted metal latch. He dug his fingers into the miniscule seam between the wall and the door, swearing loudly, and Logan ran over to help him. A larger crack appeared, about the height of a smile, and Logan’s hands slipped fully through to grip the thick, splintery surface, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>pushed</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a terrible grating sound, and the huge wooden door slid back to reveal a cavernous interior, the floor carpeted with hay. Four stalls stood empty on Logan’s left hand side. As he stepped into the barn, craning his neck to look at the swallows that dove down from the rafters, startled by the breach of fresh air, he noticed that the stall second from the back had two bales of hay pressed together inside it, covered in a blanket. Almost like a bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Perfect,” Fear said, “You might want to move out of the way, L.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan dove inside one the stall before Fear could plow him over with the truck, which thankfully didn’t hit anything on its way inside. His new position allowed him to take a closer look at the setup that caught his eye before. Tucked between the makeshift cot and the wall was a battered brown suitcase. A horrifyingly dirty toothbrush in a green plastic cup perched atop it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come look at this,” Logan said once Fear ducked out of the driver’s seat once more. He ambled over to stand beside Logan and followed the line of his companion’s pointing finger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Someone’s been staying here,” he said, then inhaled sharply. “Shit. What if they come back?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nobody would voluntarily live in the Nolands except the desperate, the fleeing, or, well, them. The idea of somebody returning to their makeshift abode and finding the truck there… They might steal it, or vandalise it, or strip it for parts, or worse, hide in wait for its owners to return. The thought made Logan’s skin crawl, but it was better to expose themselves to one person rather than however many might be wandering around outside. He said as much to Fear, who didn’t look thrilled, but agreed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With the door shut and the truck stowed away, they crossed to the other side of the barn, and found themselves confronted with the hulking silhouette of Warehouse 26B. It was closer than Logan expected, but farther than he’d like. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pulled his mask out of his pocket and tugged it on, comforted by the semblance of anonymity it provided him with. Fear did the same. They made eye contact through the snipped-out holes inset into the patterned fabric. Logan gave him a single nod and he saw Fear’s shoulders drop and grow steely. It was time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They made the walk in silence, shoulder-to-shoulder, Fear staying half a step behind Logan with his gaze tilted in the direction from whence they came. Logan kept his hand tight around the handle of his knife, a steady weight in the sheath of his hip. It was so still and quiet save for their own breathing and footsteps. Logan kept expecting something to come barreling out of the fog, but nothing did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Soon enough, they were upon it. It was an ugly rectangular thing, an endless expanse of grey stone that bloomed out of the ground like a tumor. The small, square windows floated high above their heads, and Logan and Fear stuck close to the walls as they crept around the outer edge, peeking around corners and trailing hands over the uncannily smooth stone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the second corner they came across, Logan tilted his head to peer around it and spotted the signature khaki of the Guard uniform. He jerked back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How many?” Fear breathed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan held up one finger. Even through the sheet, Logan could see muscles in his face jump as Fear’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stay,” Fear mouthed. Logan started to hiss a protest, but Fear darted out into the fray before the appropriate words could form on Logan’s tongue. He poked his head out just far enough to watch things unfold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The guard was facing away from the approaching Fear, humming to himself. It was fascinating to witness Fear sneaking up on someone as an outsider rather than a victim. His measured steps, soundless and precise, the near-imperceptible rise and fall of his back as his breaths swallowed into almost nothing. His whole lanky body seemed to fold in on itself, coiling like a snake preparing to strike.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> He stopped a mere inch from the guard’s back, leaned in, and said, “Hey.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The guard spun around and was met with a sharp uppercut to the jaw. The sound of flesh against flesh echoed across the landscape’s tight-lipped serenity with a sickening </span>
  <em>
    <span>SMACK</span>
  </em>
  <span>. They stumbled backwards, and Fear’s hand shot out to grip the hollow of their shoulder, preventing them from angling their neck to reduce the impact of the second blow, which collided with their temple.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They went limp as a punctured balloon. Fear released his grip and let their body flop loudly to the ground, landing with their arm bent over their exposed back at an unnatural angle. Fear shook out his hands beside his shoulders, wincing. At least his leather gloves provided some protection. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan strolled over and poked the guard’s prone body with his foot. Out cold. Fear was never cruel, but always efficient. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was easy,” Logan said, blinking. He knelt on the ground beside them and, after screwing up his face in distaste, rolled them over so their blank stare was directed upward at the dreary sky. He tugged the edge of their jacket up, exposing a thick black belt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He unlatched the ring of keys from it and closed his hand around them to stop the cheerful jangling. One was marked with a piece of green tape, which hopefully meant that it would be their literal and metaphorical key into the warehouse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear scowled. “Too easy.” His fingers coiled into the fabric of his pants. “I don’t like this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan handed him the keys and turned his attention to the weapon encased in the holster hanging at the guard’s right thigh. With some difficulty, he tugged it free and held it up to the light. “This is a </span>
  <em>
    <span>taser</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he said in disbelief. “They can’t even give their guards real guns?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I doubt it’s a matter of </span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Fear said. “More like they don’t think they need to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So Prince was right,” Logan mused. “I suppose the location is protection enough.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe.” Fear ran an anxious hand over the top of his head. “Or maybe there’s something more that we haven’t run into yet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I really hope you’re being paranoid,” said Logan grimly. He pulled off the guard’s jacket, folded it into a ball, and stuffed it into his backpack before climbing to his feet. “Come on.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear hauled the unconscious body up by the shoulders and followed Logan towards the broad blue doors that indicated the entrance of the warehouse. Logan fumbled with the green key and held his breath as it wiggled painstakingly into the slot. He felt the lock click.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He reached for his knife, and held it aloft with his left hand as the right one twisted the key in the lock, shoulder pressing the door forward. It pulled open with a soft creak. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cautiously, Logan stepped into a long, monochrome hallway, lit by a few hissing fluorescent bulbs inset into the unfinished ceiling above, their harsh white glare prickling uncomfortably across Logan’s skin like so many sets of eyes. He leaned back to shut the door, as quietly as he could. The sliver of weak midday light trickling in from outside disappeared with a sensation like a gulp, and then they were entombed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beside him, Fear’s gaze flickered about wildly, never settling on anything for more than a millisecond. “We have to leave them somewhere,” he said, shaking the guard for emphasis. Their skull wagged back and forth on the column of their neck like a bobblehead toy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The corridor was slim and extended straight forward. There were a couple doors on either side of it, and at the end was another blue door like the one they had entered from. Logan started towards it, pausing to test the knob of the first gateway they came across. It swung open smoothly in his hand, revealing a supply closet stocked with buckets, mops, and a rainbow of cleaning solutions, lined up on a shelf facing them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, that works,” Logan said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear propped up the guard against one of the walls and then placed a bucket over their head for good measure. “Does this thing lock?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan checked. “Not from the outside.” At least the guard’s radio device was tucked into the front pocket of their jacket, and subsequently, Logan’s backpack. They would not be calling for backup anytime soon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know how long they’ll be out for,” Fear said. He leaned against the threshold of the closet and groaned, massaging his temples. “Fuck, L, why didn’t you bring Deceit along too? We could use a little fairy dust right about now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s fine,” Logan snapped. “We’re fine. Don’t pussy out on me now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Never have, never will.” Fear’s eyes softened slightly, then crinkled up at the corners. “Alright, kid, let’s go cause some problems.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan allowed himself a grin. He allowed himself to believe that it really could be this easy. “How did you guess my favorite hobby?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They walked quickly to the end of the hall. The only other door Logan checked was for storage as well, this time containing a rack of spare Guard uniforms, and he felt almost confident in the confidence that crept up on him at the sight. It wasn’t so strange, he assured himself, nobody went into the Nolands, especially not anybody with the means or the spirit to break into a warehouse. It made sense that the government would divert its funds and manpower elsewhere, especially if Prince’s claim about the grain tax was true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan was almost unsurprised when the key from earlier worked again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whoa,” he said, forgetting to lower his voice. Fear’s elbow swooped in for a quick reprimand, jabbing him in the small of the back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The warehouse looked huge even from the outside, but the scope was somehow all the more impressive from within. It appeared to be a single, enormous room, filled with rows of industrial metal shelves that stretched almost all the way to the ceiling. The white-tiled floor was polished to shine, and a faded, elongated version of himself stared up at Logan in wonderment. Behind him, the dark grey smudge that was Fear broke off to wander towards something bright orange and eye-level to its left. The real Fear’s footsteps echoed on the floor for a few moments before he altered his gait and the room fell silent again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> It was almost like an indoor market, though far more vast than any Logan had seen. He barely registered his feet propelling him forward, down the aisle directly in front of him. There was… so much shit. Logan had never pictured such an obscene amount of </span>
  <em>
    <span>stuff</span>
  </em>
  <span> existing in one place. The shelves were stacked high with crates and boxes of all sizes, sheets of plywood, translucent plastic containers stacked within each other like Russian nesting dolls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a strange brand of irony, Logan thought, to store boxes alongside identical boxes which stored things. He was sure there was an underlying order to the outward chaos, but it was impossible to puzzle out since Logan couldn’t see the contents of the various cartons. From his perspective, it was one endless jumble.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He spun in a circle and shivered at the excess breeze that the motion generated. It was fucking cold in here, even with the weight of his coat on his shoulders. There was no </span>
  <em>
    <span>way</span>
  </em>
  <span> the whole place was filled like this. Perhaps the goods were condensed into the first few aisles in order to reserve space for future additions. No way that the Capitol could brand this kind of excess as so minor that it only required one guard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan turned a corner and came screeching to a halt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fear,” he said lowly, though the room’s hard, flat surfaces caused the word to reverberate as if he had yelled it. Fear appeared at the mouth of the walkway and, spotting Logan, jogged towards him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pointed at the shelf that stretched ahead of them and saw Fear’s jaw drop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was </span>
  <em>
    <span>piled</span>
  </em>
  <span> with flour, sacks upon sacks. The burlap mounds blended together into a single gigantic being, the neutral brown sandwiched between red hems signifying barley, yellow for wheat, blue for buckwheat. Logan tilted his head back to glimpse the point where the metal bars ceased their upward journey. He half-believed that if he let his eyes ascend it slowly, one layer at a time, it would end up going on forever. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Holy fuck,” Fear said. “Prince was fucking right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Logan marveled. “I can’t believe it. He’s going to be ecstatic.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear looked at him sideways. “More like, pissed that you left him behind.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Details.” Logan waved him off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They must have done a preservation spell,” Fear observed. “Man, how many medechqirs do you think that took?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m wondering about how many people they took this </span>
  <em>
    <span>from</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Logan said, stepping forward to run his hand along the ledge of the third shelf from the bottom. The anger that shot through him was so familiar it hardly registered as emotion. “Kayda’s sake. Of </span>
  <em>
    <span>course</span>
  </em>
  <span> there’s a fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>flour shortage</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s one thing to hear about it, but…“ Fear shook his head. “The others are gonna flip their shit. If they don’t kill us both first.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not worried,” Logan said. “I can always pin the blame on you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t believe I’m the only one that realizes you’re actually a total dick,” grumbled Fear, ducking around to examine the other side of the rack.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And I love how you’re always so nice to me,” Logan called through the slats, receiving a frustrated noise in response. Previous data indicated that Fear was probably flipping him off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan smiled despite himself, bracing his hand against the ledge in order to tug a bag of semolina flour free from its storage position. He would have to apologize to Prince after this, but it would be worth the trouble. They were making it work. Making waves. He felt a rare sense of solidity and contentment. Soon enough, the rest of their team would be here, together, and then they would ransack this place blind. But for now— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, well, well,” came a voice, high and lilting and raspy as a chainsmoker. Logan froze, hands tightening into the rough fabric of the flour sack. Time seemed to grind to a halt, every indistinct background noise sharpening into a scream. The sound of an inhale. The uncomfortable, warm sensation of somebody else’s breath against the outer curve of his ear. “What do we have here?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan felt the words crawl down his vertebrae, dripping like a cracked egg alongside the prickling chill of dread, and then— That telltale cold pressure of a gun against his neck.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This chapter is one of my favorites! I've been planning it for ages and we truly haven't had enough Logic content in this fic so far. I hope you enjoyed it haha</p><p>Thank you all for your lovely comments! They are oh so very appreciated, and keep me going on this story, honestly &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Deceit tries to teach Prince some magique, and Logic tries to sweet-talk his way out of a very sticky situation. Both these ventures have limited success. Drama! Violence! Arson! Secret identities! And most excitingly of all, a new relationship tag. :)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hi my loves! I hope you enjoy this chapter bc I sure loved writing it. I apologize for how slow-going updates have been as of late, but alas that will probably continue— junior year is a bitch :( Also this one is a solid 9k sjfdskj so I'm gonna cut myself some slack.</p><p>CW: detailed description of scars, physical &amp; gun violence, lots of sexual innuendo, unwanted flirting</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Again,” said Deceit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes pinned to the jagged grey stone that remained stubbornly settled into the dirt in the center of the clearing. If he allowed himself to look up at Deceit’s pinched expression, Roman wouldn’t be able to restrain himself from punching him square in that stupid crooked, pointy nose, and that probably go wouldn’t over too well with Heart. Roman sighed, shut his eyes, and tried to shove down another surge of frustration. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doubted that repeating the same process that had been faithfully </span>
  <em>
    <span>not working</span>
  </em>
  <span> for the past hour was going to get them anywhere, but it’s not like he knew enough to criticise Deceit’s methods. For what felt like the hundredth time, he called to mind an image of the rock, sitting on the ground: The color (a pale flecked grey), the size (similar to that of the palm of his hand), the darker splotches created by the few raindrops that had slipped through cracks in the tree cover.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Step two: Visualizing the desired result of the spell. He pictured the rock lifting off the ground and hovering a foot or so in the air. The image was becoming so ingrained in his brain he half-expected to see it there when he cracked his eyes open. Alas, the bane of his existence had stayed put, as rocks often do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Using magique was like drawing water from a well, if the books Roman had slogged through were anything to go by. This wasn’t a helpful comparison, since Roman had very little experience with wells. Deceit claimed it was more familiar, like pulling your keys out from your pocket as you walked up the front steps of your house, and Roman asked how Deceit would know, when he probably had butlers to unlock his door for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In Roman’s experience, magique was closer to... a petrol bomb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He reached back inside the recesses of his mind, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to be feeling around for, or where to look. It felt like groping in the dark for the right button on the alarm clock or, to apply a more </span>
  <em>
    <span>Technique &amp; Theory</span>
  </em>
  <span>-approved metaphor, straining to draw water up from a long-dry well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Léviter</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he said, simultaneously jerking his hand upward as if tugging the strings of the marionette. The stone didn’t move. “Fuck!” Roman yelled, and kicked a pinecone, watching with satisfaction as it sailed into a bush and sent a squirrel scrambling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do calm down,” Deceit sniffed, “You can't get it to float via </span>
  <em>
    <span>tantrum</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” He strolled over and took Roman’s wrist, fingertips pressing tight and cold, and roughly flapped the joint up and down as if greasing a hinge. “Your motions are too rigid. And we’ve discussed that pronunciation—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman yanked his arm from Deceit’s. “I don’t think pronunciation is the problem.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit directed the airflow of his ensuing irritated sigh upward so that it lifted his bangs temporarily off his forehead. His hair was usually slicked smoothly back from his face, but he’d spent the past hour running his hands through it in an apparent nervous habit, and now it flopped down over his eyes, the longest strands brushing the tops of his cheekbones. “I imagine you have a better theory, then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I do,” Roman said, “It’s that I can’t fucking do magique.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve seen you do magique,” Deceit pointed out. “We’ve been over this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t do it on command! I can’t—” Roman made a few agitated, encompassing gestures. “Access it!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, you can,” Deceit said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman crossed his arms. “How?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You just...” He paused, thumping the candlestick against his thigh. It caught the weak vestiges of light as it moved, gleaming like a beacon amid the sallow, grey haze brought on by the rain. “How do you expect me to explain it? You just </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> do.” Roman muttered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe I should demonstrate.” Deceit leaned back on his heels and held the hand not wrapped around the candlestick aloft in front of him. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Léviter</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he enunciated, flicking his wrist upward, and okay, yeah, that sounded better, even though Roman was sure he had said those same syllables in that same order.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rock obligingly shot into the air and loitered at waist-level, vibrating gently. Deceit said something else and it began whizzing around the clearing, all sharp turns and straight edges as if bouncing off of an invisible force field, and well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> was just showing off. Roman jumped back to avoid being socked in the stomach.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Voila,” said Deceit smugly, swishing his fingers again, and the rock dropped back to the ground at his feet. He swung the candlestick up between his two hands, tapping it repeatedly against the open palm of one and gazing at Roman with a raised eyebrow as if awaiting a response. </span>
  <em>
    <span>As if</span>
  </em>
  <span> Roman was going to bow down and espouse about how Deceit the magiqual master had solved all his accessing problems by levitating a single stone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nice show,” Roman said. “But you’re still a shit teacher.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not my fault you’re repressed,” Deceit huffed. “This would be easier for everybody involved if you had learned how to access as a kid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not all of us had fancy magique tutors, mate,” Roman eyed the candlestick. “... Or fancy artefacts.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instinctively, Deceit cradled it closer to his chest. “That’s not my fault either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stared at each other for a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can I— “ Roman started.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Certainly not,” Deceit said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please,” Roman begged, “What if it helps? What if this is the only way I can learn magique? What if I get killed because I can’t do a proper hex and you have to live with the knowledge that it’s your fault?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I currently live with worse,” Deceit pointed out. “Need I remind you, </span>
  <em>
    <span>again</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that artefacts are not toys? They are very powerful, dangerous objects—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, and I traveled with one for, like, weeks and didn’t kill anyone,” Roman stepped closer to Deceit and held out a hand. “Or myself. I’ll be careful. You can </span>
  <em>
    <span>supervise</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Deceit hesitated. Roman agreeing to be presided over seemed to hold appeal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pleaaaase?” Roman trilled, throwing in a pout for good measure. Deceit’s eye twitched. Roman’s lip quavered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine!” Deceit shoved the candlestick at Roman, who snapped from pitiable to beaming in a nanosecond flat. He ran his hand down the body of it, embossed with a pattern of ornate, curling leaves that twisted playfully around each other. Wild-haired cherubs peeked out from between the branches. The holder was a little shorter than his forearm, though much slimmer, and fluted out into a flat, ruffled base at either end. Patches of the metal were warm from where Deceit’s hand had gripped it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He swung it around like he had seen Deceit do. “Nothing’s happening.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You still have to access your magique, idiot.” Deceit was watching him intently, nervously, shoulders drawn up to his ears. His hands spasmed at his sides every time Roman’s waving switched directions, like he was resisting the urge to storm over and snatch the artefact back. “It just gives you more to work with.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman tossed the candlestick in the air, grinning at the way Deceit’s whole face contorted with horror. He caught it and stumbled. “Damn, that’s heavy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That doesn’t look like ‘being careful’ to me,” Deceit said testily.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright, alright.” Roman sauntered towards Deceit and hooked his foot around the stone to kick it back into the center of the clearing. He cracked his neck, focused his gaze on it, and took a few deep breaths. He shut his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Think of it like opening a closet door,” said Deceit’s voice, from close behind him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hate all your metaphors,” Roman told him, and thought, instead, of the matching candlestick that still sat in Em’s cupboard alongside the few remaining pieces of nice china.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> He thought of the time when Remus had dared him to grab it, and he was atop his brother’s shoulders and reaching out when mom and Em came rushing into the kitchen and Roman found out not everybody could turn the pages of books by force of wanting, and that meant that he was special, and that being special sometimes meant you couldn’t touch certain things.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something flickered inside him. Like a spark or a jumping radio signal.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Roman thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rifled through his memories and pulled out another, then another. Hot midsummers spent eating ice cubes and lying with sweaty t-shirts pasted to the floor. Trying to build a zipline out of the bathroom window and Remus' resulting broken arm. Mom kissing his forehead and as he lingered on the edge of sleep. The sound of the door shutting behind her for the last time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It felt like striking a match. Like the rumbling ignition of a car. Like getting drunk. It felt distinctly, and oddly, </span>
  <em>
    <span>pink</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It felt like all of these things and none of these things at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman could have laughed. Of </span>
  <em>
    <span>course</span>
  </em>
  <span> it never clicked when compared to pulling out your keys. Magique was “like” nothing except itself. You could line up all the similes in the world and every single one would be shit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He opened his eyes. He felt very, very alive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Léviter</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he heard himself say. His wrist flicked. The rock shot upward a good ten feet as if fired from a gun and stayed. He jerked backward and stared. It was like he was moving underwater, his body trailing a few steps behind his brain. Shock and joy and fear mingled into a single wild swell of emotion that would best be identified as “holy shit”.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Holy shit,” Roman said, turning to face Deceit and swinging an arm out to gesture at the still-floating stone, “Did you see—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rest of the sentence died in his mouth because at that very moment, the gnarled oak tree in the path of his pointing finger burst into flame.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A few things happened in quick succession. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit pushed past Roman, whacking him hard in the chest, and yelled some words Roman barely heard but assumed were more incantations. There was a low rushing sound, and a stream of water came crashing through the wall of foliage to their right. It was a thick jet, about as large as a grown man’s thigh, and it arced unnaturally around itself, swerving to avoid Deceit before it collided with the burning tree in a loud hiss of smoke, and kept colliding. The torrent continued without end as more water appeared to replace what had already been hurled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The light display crumpled in on itself, folding and diminishing, until the roaring became fizzling and the last of the water burst in a ball at the base of the tree, staining the roots a deeper brown. Writhing tendrils of gray smoke trailed from blackened patches of wood, which were spread across the trunk and branches like boils. Deceit crumbled to his knees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman’s auditory processing capability returned just in time to catch the tail end of a series of hissed obscenities emitting from underneath the hunched back of the other boy. He looked around and realized that the world had returned to normal once more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The candlestick lay in a patch of grass beside him, having been dropped sometime during the chaos. Roman left it there and ran across the clearing and dropped to a crouch in front of Deceit, almost knocking them both over in his haste.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit’s face was white and drawn, his mouth pressed into a hard, unsteady line. The upper half of his expression was shielded by the arm braced in front of his forehead, culminating in the fingers twisted in his hair. From the way his lips sloped even farther downwards, he was not thrilled to see Roman, which, to be fair, was par for the course.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh my god,” Roman said. “What was that? Are you okay? Where did all that water come from?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Summoned it from the river,” Deceit said through gritted teeth, clutching his head as if preparing to pry off his neck. “And yes, I’m fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>peachy</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Princey, obviously.” He took a deep, shuddering breath which snagged into a groan on the exhale.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something awful occurred to him. “Are you... are you Empty?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You would </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> if I was Empty,” Deceit growled. “No. I just— overextended.” He shook himself and made a move as if to stand, but then collapsed back down with a wince. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, my head kills. Logic’s gonna be so cross.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell him it’s my fault.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh believe me, I will.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shit, I’m so, so, sorry, honestly,” Roman said. Deceit didn’t look at him. A shard of shame made its presence known as Roman’s stomach rolled over and settled on top of it. He awkwardly reached out and touched Deceit’s arm, the one that was pressed against the ground to prop him up. “I didn’t realize—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit froze. Even his ragged breathing came to a screeching halt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman drew back as if burnt, feeling guilty and mildly offended. “Oh. Um. Sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly, there were hands gripping either side of his face, and his gaze was yanked up to meet Deceit’s. There was nowhere to look except at him, shoved into the forefront of Roman’s vision in disagreeably close relief. The shaky, lopsided set of his jaw. His beaky bent nose. The crease between his eyebrows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman tried not to stare at the raised, mottled burn scar that ripped across the left half of Deceit’s features from just below his hairline to the base of his jaw, in addition to most of his chin. It was an insipid pink, webbed with protruding white lines. There were these cracks too, gullies, almost: Like a muddled mix of paint in which some bits had dried faster and paler than others, leaving blotches of angry red. A chirping voice in Roman’s head wondered what it would feel like to the touch. He was near enough that he could find out if he wanted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Incredible,” Deceit murmured, so quietly it might have been to himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um,” said Roman intelligently. He felt warm all of a sudden and decided he would like this situation to be over. They were so close together Roman could see that one of Deceit’s otherwise blue-green eyes had a slice of brown in it, like a patch of soft soil peeking through grass. Or the hull of a half-sunk boat protruding from within a tranquil ocean. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman watched in confusion as color filled back into Deceit’s face. It was like watching the saturation on a photograph being cranked up bit by bit. Even the dark hollows around his eyes settled into a hue that was closer to healthy. By the time his cheek regained some pink, he was wearing a full-blown grin. “Kayda’s tits,” Deceit said breathlessly. He grabbed Roman’s hand and pulled both of them to their feet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another short list of incantations interrupted Roman’s already discombobulated train of thought. Deceit pulled this arm up above his head and brought it down in a graceful swoosh, the inertia carrying it almost into a full circle. The fallen leaves blanketing the forest floor all shot towards the center of the clearing before lifting off the ground and whirling into a miniature tornado, encasing the two of them in a warm-toned explosion of color.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman tilted his head back towards the tiny square of grey sky that remained unblocked.The leaves whipped and rustled together around him, buffeted by the whistling of a sourceless wind. It was more dizzying than pretty, and his thin green pullover did little to protect against the chill of the gale. As was rapidly becoming usual, he had no fucking clue what was happening. But he didn’t have the mental capacity to try and puzzle it out, because Deceit was </span>
  <em>
    <span>laughing</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His hair floated around his head like a halo, a series of flashing beacons directing Roman’s gaze inward towards those strange multicolored eyes, alight with joy and also something sharper. Roman had never seen him smile like that. It looked too wide and too bright to fit on his narrow features, and Roman almost feared it would split him clean in two.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Almost as soon as it had started, the cyclone ended with a final, definitive </span>
  <em>
    <span>FWUMP</span>
  </em>
  <span> as a torrent of leaves poured down around them to form a knee-high pile around and atop their feet. Roman shook his head and sent another, smaller cascate of flora fluttering to the ground.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um,” he said, again. He shocked himself with his eloquence sometimes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit looked down and Roman felt his own hand fall back to his side, empty once more. The smile slipped from Deceit’s face alongside it, and he took a few shuffling steps backward, wading through the leaves before coming to a stop a solid meter away from Roman.“Sorry,” he said, avoiding Roman’s gaze in favor of readjusting his hair with the aid of his warped reflection in a residual puddle from the </span>
  <em>
    <span>léviter</span>
  </em>
  <span> fiasco. There was a leaf stuck to the right shoulder of his jumper. “Just testing a theory.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you okay?” Roman asked. Yet another repeat statement. Deceit’s general, unpersonable vagueness was turning even Roman, creative genius that he was, into a broken record. “What theory? How are you suddenly not dying?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Magique,” Deceit snipped, helpfully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can you stop being annoying for one second and actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>explain</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Roman said. “Pretend that I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. It shouldn’t be too hard, considering that I </span>
  <em>
    <span>don’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit rolled his eyes so hard his irises momentarily disappeared. “Different people have different ‘supplies’ of magique,” he said, in that sing-song voice of his that meant he was gearing up for a characteristically patronising lecture. “The amount of magiqual capability a person has affects their power, stamina, a—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>much,” Roman cut in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, anyway, you have a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Deceit said. “Your technique is so abysmal it’s basically useless, but nonetheless.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whereas </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span>...” Deceit paused, and grimaced. “I don’t have... quite as much.” Exposing even an inch of vulnerability seemed to pain him to the depths of his soul. “From what I’ve read, it’s not all inherent, it’s also based on practice. I grew up using an artefact, and, well, I never expected that </span>
  <em>
    <span>wouldn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> be an option, so—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t practice much, did you?” Roman said. He grinned. “Story of my school career. Wouldn’t have pegged you for a slacker, Dee.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit wrinkled his nose. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Dee?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Short for Deceit,” Roman explained, gesturing a hand towards the young man in question. “Your whole weird cryptic deal doesn’t give me a lot of nickname material.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dee</span>
  </em>
  <span>—” He said the nickname with palpable distaste, “Then you can be...” He  squinted. “Prince is already one syllable.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What a </span>
  <em>
    <span>shame</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Roman sighed. “Guess you’ll be forced to continue to address me by my proper title.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not a title.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Prince’ is a title. You call me Prince. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ergo</span>
  </em>
  <span>—” He smirked, pleased with himself for working that excellent word into regular conversation. Logic would be proud. “It’s my title.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Horrendous reasoning aside,” Deceit said, “I </span>
  <em>
    <span>will</span>
  </em>
  <span> come with something, mark my words. There’s always Princey. The standby.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>longer</span>
  </em>
  <span>, what’s the point?” Roman whined.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The point is that you hate it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman flipped him off, and remembered that Deceit still hadn’t answered his second question. He said so, and added, “That was quite a recovery. It may well be the first time I’ve seen you smile.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I smile,” Deceit insisted. “When the occasion calls for it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not many occasions call for it, then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not ones around you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman let out an affronted squawk, clapping his hand to his chest, and was delighted to see Deceit bite the inside of his cheek to fight back a smile, of all things.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I see that,” Roman crowed, pointing. “Not even you, Sunshine, can resist my smothering charm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Smothering’ is certainly accurate,” Deceit quipped brightly, before an air of apprehension fell across him once more. He bit the inside of his cheek and glanced away. “Also, about earlier... I may have... taken some of your magique.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman blinked. “Huh, really? I didn’t know that was possible. Does it work the same as an artefact?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, like a really big alive one,” Deceit said. “But it feels a bit more </span>
  <em>
    <span>blue</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman hated that that sentence made sense to him now. “Weird.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know.” He paused. “I sort of expected you to be angrier about this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why? What, would you be?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I’d have probably killed you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right,” Roman nodded sagely. “Since your magique is so much weaker than mine. I don’t blame you for being bitter. It must be hard being around someone this cool and hot and powerful all the time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Deceit scowled. “I’m never speaking to you again,” he informed Roman, whirling on his heel and stalking out the clearing with his nose in the air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roman caught up to him and they fell into step together. The path leading back towards the cottage was thin enough that Roman had to tramp over and through numerous thorny bushes in order to walk beside Deceit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nice try,” he said, elbowing him lightly, “You’re stuck with me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Go set yourself on fire,” said Deceit, not unkindly. The perpetually dreary sky made it impossible to identify the passage of time, but the fringe of the treetops had taken on a softer tinge, blending in with the darkening backdrop as evening drew closer. A bird chirped morosely in the distance, and Roman thought that despite the fact that everything went wrong, it had been altogether a successful lesson.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Very slowly, Logan set down the bag of flour, retracting his fingers one by one from where they were curled into the burlap, and lifted his hands in the air on either side of his head. “Hello there,” he said, willing his voice not to shake. “What can I help you with?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A heavy sigh. The gun nudged Logan’s neck with a bit more insistency. “I threaten your life and </span>
  <em>
    <span>that’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> the reaction I get?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Are</span>
  </em>
  <span> you threatening my life?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think it’s implicit.” The voice spoke at a volume too high for comfort, as if acting in a stage play. It was thready, abrasive, almost bored, with an undercurrent of amusement that made Logan more nervous than outright aggression would have. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you want to leave and try again later, maybe next time I’ll scream,” Logan offered. He channeled his inner Prince to force a stilted attempt at a winning smile onto his face, even though his assailant couldn’t see it. In a perfect world, Logan would be able to channel Prince and blow this bastard into slivers of shrapnel, but life wasn’t always fair, now was it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stranger barked out a laugh that echoed off the flat, harsh surfaces of the storage room like a thunderclap. “Clever,” they sing-songed, “I’ve caught a clever one. Oh, this will be fun. It’s been so </span>
  <em>
    <span>dead</span>
  </em>
  <span> around here lately. I can’t imagine why…” They trailed off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan’s brain was whirling at a mile a minute, scrambling for a semblance of a plan. His knife hung heavy and accusing at his side, more a burden than a comfort. He wouldn’t be able to reach it without drawing attention to himself, and it wouldn’t be of much use against a gun, anyway. God, was he a fool. He could almost hear Deceit’s disdainful drawl: </span>
  <em>
    <span>Planning to slice some bread, then, Logic?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The voice spoke again, slicing through Logan’s eddying thoughts. “I know you’re there.” There was no response. A second sigh, more theatrical than the first. “Don’t go pissing me off, now. Let’s come out and have a civilised chat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sound of boots thumping across the floor emerged from the silence, as if somebody had appeared out of thin air onto the shiny grey tile. Even just through footsteps, Fear managed to convey a general air of sullenness. Logan pictured him slinking out from between the shelves to stand behind the stranger’s shoulder, and the image calmed him down somewhat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How the hell did you know he was there?” Logan asked, impressed despite himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lucky guess.” The unknown voice sounded unbearably smug.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let. Him. Go,” Fear growled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aww, are you going to attack me?” the stranger taunted. “Go ahead, if you’d like. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You’ll</span>
  </em>
  <span> probably end up alright.” He prodded Logan meaningfully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The footsteps picked up again, the volume ascending and descending as Fear prowled in a semicircle around Logan and his captor. Logan stared at the bags of flour in front of him and tried not to fidget, uneasy to be missing the action in this conversation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” said the stranger, noticing this, “You can turn around if you’d like.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cautiously, Logan did so, and found himself face-to-face with a man in his mid-to-late twenties, with golden brown skin, an unkempt mane of hair that fell unbidden around his shoulders, dark umber except for a white-dyed chunk dangling between his slightly crossed cinnamon eyes. He wore a thin, tattered black pullover and enormous, leering smile with far too many teeth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked… implacably familiar. It was not uncommon for strangers to bear resemblance to ghosts, but there was something in particular about this man that pinged something in Logan’s memory, like a face he knew taken slightly to the left.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The gun descended to rest in the cranny in the center of Logan’s chest, pinning him where he stood. He took a miniscule step back. The barrel followed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come stand over here,” he commanded, waving Fear towards a spot of ground to the left of Logan, so that the three of them would form a triangle. Fear took a few steps closer, as if it pained him to do so. The stranger hummed, pleased, and thoughtfully tapped his finger against his chin. “Masks off. Just to even the playing field.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan hesitated, but Fear glared at him and mouthed something that looked suspiciously like, ‘do it, dumbass’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stranger’s eyes stayed glued to Fear as he reached up and peeled off his mask, revealing those flashing black eyes, dark brown skin, a smooth-shaved head and a set jaw, veering leftward, with a muscle twitching inside it. Fear crumpled the mask into a ball in his shaking fist, shoving into the pocket of his jacket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m Remus,” said the stranger, before either of them could protest. He winked at Fear. “But you can call me whatever you’d like.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear glowered. “How does ‘son of a bitch’ sound?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus— if that was his real name— grinned even wider, a feat which Logan had not previously thought  possible. “From such a pretty mouth? Lovely.” He reached out and patted the side of Fear’s cheek, who recoiled, swatting his hand away with a snarl. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ughh, loosen up, I’m just playing. From the look on your face, you’d think your life was in danger.” He gasped, clapping his free hand to his chest as a deceptively innocent giggle welled up. “Oh, wait!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus turned back to Logan, who had removed his mask sometime during that exchange, and blanched. “Holy shit, you’re a child.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am not,” Logan snapped. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, you fucking are,” said Fear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How old?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Twenty-one,” Logan lied, at the same time Fear said, “Nineteen. I think.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus decided to believe Fear, for unfounded, unfair reasons that were probably disturbingly related to his earlier flirtations. “That’s not even of age.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Legally, no,” Logan admitted, sullenly. He ran away from home to found a middling anti-government rebel group, and this was the thanks he got? He had no idea why Deceit was never subjected to this sort of slander, despite being at least half a year younger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Name?” asked Remus, as if he was running through a mandated checklist and had already tired of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan said nothing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus’ smile didn’t falter, but it tightened around the edges, going a little sharper, a little more fragile. “I asked you a question.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan lifted his chin to stare him straight in the eyes. “You can call me Logic.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus snorted. “What kinda fuckin’ name is that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mine,” said Logan. Remus met his unblinking gaze and held it for an inhuman amount of time, until Logan’s eyes finally started watering and he glanced askance, silently cursing. Oh, Kayda, was Remus an illusionniste? Had he spelled his eyes to automatically regenerate his aqueous humor? Now that was a picture.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine,” Remus sighed, “If you must be so dull.” He snapped his fingers in Fear’s direction, as if calling a dog. “You. Hot one. What’s his actual name?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Logic,” said Fear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus’ dangerously cheery countenance dropped, face settling into a mask of cool indifference that was, somehow, worse. “What. Is. It?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Fear said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’m Fear. He’s Logic. That’s just how it is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus huffed and rolled his eyes. “Wha</span>
  <em>
    <span>tever</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Play that way. What brings you to this severed neck of the woods, then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got lost on the way to the pharmacy,” said Logan flatly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear looked like he was contemplating flinging Logan across the room by the scruff of his neck. Remus leaned closer, bowing down so that he and Logan were at eye-level, his lips peeling back into a joyless leer. Logan could smell his breath. It was not a pleasant experience. Unconsciously, he took another step back. Remus took a step forward, boxing him in closer to the shelf that stood behind him, at a distance of a few feet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now, now, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Logic</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he crooned, “Be serious.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m always serious.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As a heart attack?” Remus asked, pressing closer. “Or perhaps a stroke? Head trauma? Not ringing a bell, is it? How about a demonstration?” Logan’s mind groped around for an excuse or a quip, anything, but before he could find one, Fear lunged.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was an aborted </span>
  <em>
    <span>BANG</span>
  </em>
  <span>. A shout. The sound of a body smacking against the floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan was thrown backwards into the shelf of flour, his shoulder clanging against metal and sending a burst of pain shooting down his spine. He caught himself against one of the beams, wrapping a shaking arm around it to support his weight. The cool iron smushed against his cheek burned like a brand. He felt muzzy all over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a lot of noise coming from somewhere in the vicinity, but he couldn’t hear it over the pounding in his ears as his head spun, over and over itself. He pressed a hand to his chest, expecting to feel that sickly, wet heat, but touched only the dry, knitted strands of his jumper. He blinked. Took a deep breath. Tried again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The world twitched back into focus, as if he had just put on his glasses. Fear and Remus were on the ground in a tumble of limbs, Remus’ high, frenzied laughter mixing in with Fear’s frustrated snarls as they brawled. It was not a clean fight. Fear had abandoned his usual proper technique in favor of sheer, whirling aggression, and Remus, from what Logan had gleaned thus far, had little regard for propriety in the first place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan watched, feeling oddly intrusive, as Remus body-checked Fear into a row of shelves. A few boxes rained down around them, punctuating the rhythm of the action like angry commas. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Get it together</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he told himself, firmly, and glared at his hands until they stopped shaking. He did not have time for this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something dark and sharp was looming in the lower half of his peripheral vision, and he glanced down to find the gun sitting at his feet. He picked it up, gingerly, the weight of it unpleasant in his hands, and ejected the clip, which turned out to be empty. Logan frowned, then examined the chamber. Equally vacant. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Holy shit. He was going to kill Fear. Well, first he was going to give him a grateful handshake, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>then</span>
  </em>
  <span> he was going to kill him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alas, there were more pressing matters at hand than the logistical benefits of strangulation vs bludgeoning. Logan wasn’t much of a fighter, anyway, preferring to leave that to Fear and Deceit. He was the planner— though he couldn’t help but feel he had failed at that today. The situation he had gotten them into read like the start to a very bad joke.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A warehouse in the Nolands. His favorite friend, an unconscious guard, and… well, whatever Remus was. An unloaded gun in his hand, sacks upon sacks of stolen grains, and absolutely no fucking clue what to do next.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan felt the cold edges of the pistol in his hand. Listened to the THWACK of a good punch landing. And then he had an idea. It wasn’t a plan. It was a </span>
  <em>
    <span>concept</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and a shitty one at that. It hinged on a few key— and highly unstable— variables. But they’d done more on less. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan looked up, attention caught by the sound of a particularly nasty THUMP as Remus went down hard, smacking his chin against the pavement. Logan winced and touched his own jaw instinctively.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear dropped a sack of flour on Remus’ back and plopped down atop it, stretching out his legs and plucking off a glove to examine his fingernails, the picture of nonchalance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is cozy,” said Remus, not sounding at all bothered by the situation. With considerable effort, he managed to pull his arm out from underneath his body and prop his chin in his hand, sending a beatific smile up at Logan. His nose and mouth were bleeding sluggishly, and his left eye was squinted shut, bearing the possibility of a future shiner. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear looked as untouched as ever, though there was always the possibility he was faking it and staving off a collapse until they returned to the cottage.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What the fuck was that?” Logan said, stomping over and handing the gun to him (with great care, despite his annoyance, because unlike everybody else in the immediate vicinity, Logan had great regard for the bodily safety of himself and his companions).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The slide was locked open,” said Fear. He examined the gun. “Careless and obvious.”</span>
</p><p><span>“Is it?” asked Remus shrewdly. “Not many innocent civilians</span> <span>know shit about guns.”</span></p><p>
  <span>“That’s none of your goddamn business,” Fear said. His mask of boredom was cracking at the edges, signified by the way he had begun to gnaw at the inside of his cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan was starting to feel a little jumpy himself. They had been here for far too long with not much to show for it except for a few bits of recon— and, of course, a new enemy. That was always a fun one to add to the toolbox. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well?” said Remus. “Aren’t you two going to interrogate me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you.” Fear kicked the side of his torso with the heel of his massive black boot, which Remus did not, in fact, appear to mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you want to know? I’ll tell you. I don’t have much reason to lie, do I?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Everybody has reason to lie,” Logan told him. Remus seemed almost </span>
  <em>
    <span>eager</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be questioned, which was unsettling. Logan did not like eager people, as a general rule. He squinted at him for a moment, but Remus kept his ready smile pinned in place. Anything that came out of that mouth would have to be taken with enough grains of salt to give an entire family kidney disease. “What are you doing here?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got curious.” He attempted a shrug, which was stifled by his current position. “This isn’t my first go at this joint, but I’ve never run into outsiders. It’s terribly dull around here. You can’t blame me for wanting to have a bit of fun.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fun,” said Logan skeptically. What the hell was he talking about? He mentally retraced his and Fear’s steps: Finding the flour, tussling with the guard, hiding the car… Something clicked. “You’re the person living in that barn.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No need to sound so delighted, posh.” Remus drew his lips downward into a mocking frown, which Logan returned. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Posh?</span>
  </em>
  <span> “A bed to sleep in and the whole great outdoors to shit in… What more does a man need?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan wrinkled his nose. “Right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You followed us?” Fear said, incredulous. He was clearly still sore that Remus had managed to get the jump on them. Had the situation been a little more conversational, Logan would have been drilling Remus for pointers, but it didn’t seem appropriate considering the whole thinly-veiled murder threat deal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Heard y’all pull in that car of yours. Thought I might as well wait a bit and go see what was up.” Remus was chattering away like an over-eager primary schooler discussing his summer holiday. “Good thing too. Shoddy job with that guard, but don’t worry. I tied them up all nice for you.” He tried to wink at Fear, though he couldn’t twist his head to make proper eye contact. “You into that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m into dismemberment,” Fear said. He seemed to be trying for “deceptively sweet” but just sounded pissed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hot,” said Remus, leering.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan held up a hand to cut off any potential retorts. Fear’s voice had taken on that funny growling quality that signified he was hurtling towards blind rage and/or panic. And if Logan’s half-baked plan had a chance in hell of cooking to an edible crisp in the unpredictable oven of reality— He was not the metaphor guy, alright? — then that would not do at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan stared down at Remus for a few long moments, disappointed but not surprised by the ensuing lack of terrified squirming. He supposed his strength lay in force of personality, not physicality, and that took time to cultivate.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Patience is key</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he told himself, and ignored the Deceit-like voice in his head that was currently laughing itself sick at the irony. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Remus,” Logan said, “How would you like to make a deal?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Marvelous,” Remus said instantly. “I love deals. What do I get?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We let you up—” Fear made a dismayed noise at that, “— And you can show us around. Help us out with our… pharmacy run.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus tilted his head back and forth, humming a lilting two-note tune as he did so. “Seems a bit unbalanced. Care to throw in something a little more... hands on?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan was starting to suspect that vulgarity was a fixed aspect of Remus' sense of self rather than an indication of intent. More like a verbal tic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe.” A pause. “Or we could bring you to a secondary location and let our friend deal with you.” Logan raised an eyebrow. “He’s a medechqir. Quite a powerful one.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lots of repressed anger,” Fear added. “Tragic backstory. The whole nine yards.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Didn’t he once set a whole restaurant on fire?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear shook his head in faux dismay. “All because of a fly in the soup.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been one small table, and the owner was a shithead municipal official using government money to fund a dying business (one with overdone steak, nonetheless) but Remus actually blanched, which made the sacrifice of a few middling details feel well worth it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A’ight,” he ground out, lip curling in distaste. “I’ll ‘help’ you fuckers.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear hesitated and glanced at Logan, who nodded. Reluctantly, Fear stood, leaving Remus to shake off the sack of flour and clamber to his feet like a huge, wet dog. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I would think you’d be more enthusiastic about a nice, old fashioned bout of looting,” Logan mused. “But I’ll take what I can get.” He took a few paces forward and stuck out a hand. Remus stared at it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What the hell do you want?” he asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Civility was dead and rotting, somewhere in a ditch. “A handshake, </span>
  <em>
    <span>obviously</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus grinned. “You’re an odd little man,” he said, and obliged, squeezing Logan’s fingers so hard that his eyes started to water. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now!” He let go of Logan and whirled on his heel, flinging his arms akimbo with all earlier annoyance forgotten. “Time for the grand tour!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’d better have a plan, L,” Fear muttered, sidling over to Logan as he furiously shook out his bruised hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When do I not?” said Logan, which was only a lie by omission, and thus didn’t count.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the next twenty minutes, Logan and Fear trailed Remus around the warehouse to the tune of a running stream of largely incomprehensible commentary. There was a surprising amount of food, not only grains, presumably all under preservation charms.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Occasionally, Remus— with assistance from the other two— would pull boxes down to show them. He didn’t seem concerned with keeping things orderly, strewing spare Guard uniforms and bundles of leather across the floor with nonchalant abandon. Logan half-heartedly tried to clean up after him, but soon gave up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The longer they let Remus talk, the more cheerful he became. He was now knee-deep into a laundry list of his most gruesome childhood injuries. Logan had long given up on listening, which Remus didn’t appear to notice or mind. He seemed to be thrilled with the simple delights of his own voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The only interesting thing Remus showed them, besides the food, was an assortment of weapons, filed away in various boxes and compartments, though no guns or anything military-grade. Most of them were short-range, makeshift-looking things. In particular, there were a great number of knives, often rusted or broken.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The lot’s confiscated, I expect,” Fear mused, picking up what looked to be no more than a sharpened hunk of stone bound with strips of letter along the base.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As they went, Logan picked out a few pocket knives and shoved them into his backpack. He looked longingly at some of the more impressive ones, but had to concede that shoving freewheeling blades into his pockets would have been deeply unreasonable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To the cheerful soundtrack of Remus describing the time he fell from a tree and impaled his arm on an iron gate, Fear and his newly found crowbar struggled to wrench off the lid of a small wooden crate. When he managed it, he jerked away from its gaping mouth, face twisting into a biting wince.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Holy shit,” said Logan, leaning as close to it as he could stand. There were about a dozen of objects inside, piled roughly on top of one another in a way that didn’t befit… well, what they must have once been. An engraved pocket watch. A small porcelain doll. A few pieces of jewelry— that was common, apparently. There was even a fork.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sheer concentration of the magique, packed into that tiny box, explained why Logan could sense it. He could have used Prince’s flambeau, for example, as an ordinary candle holder and never noticed a thing, but now, his nerves were tingling. It was an unpleasant sensation, like a spider crawling, agonizingly slow, down his spine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus slid over and bent his head down until it was almost </span>
  <em>
    <span>inside</span>
  </em>
  <span> the box. “Ahhh,” he said, releasing a deep, contented breath, eyes slipping shut. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear and Logan watched him incredulously.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not a medechqir, are you,” Fear said, managing to walk the line between ‘question’ and ‘statement’ with uncertain, nervous grace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus turned to them and lifted an eyebrow at their twin horrified expressions. “You’ve never gotten a magique high?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan shook his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>like</span>
  </em>
  <span> magique highs,” said Fear. “Because oh, I don’t know, I’m not a fucking psychopath?” He reached out and yanked Remus back by the scruff of his t-shirt, which was a relief, because dealing with a high Remus was not anywhere on Logan's bucket list. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus rolled his eyes but obligingly sat back on his heels. His grin didn’t look any more loopy than usual, but then again, it was difficult to tell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Should we— should we take one?” Fear asked Logan, sounding viscerally uncomfortable at the idea. “Maybe Deceit and Prince will stop fighting over the… other thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan eyed the box. Heart had held the candlestick back when they found it and had been fine, but that was </span>
  <em>
    <span>one</span>
  </em>
  <span> artefact— and probably not an exceptional one. Reaching into that crate was not Logan’s idea of an appealing extracurricular activity. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He extended a tentative hand, and then physically recoiled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” he decided. “No. No. Definitely not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear looked relieved.  “Well, when we come back Deceit can get one himself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan didn’t say anything. He watched Remus, who had gotten bored during the previous thirty or so seconds of conversation and had wandered off to go kick at some discarded boxes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In some ways, he was a bit like an unpredictable child. But he was clearly also capable, and smart. He would have to be, to hold his own, alone, in the Nolands. Perhaps it would be foolish to trust him, but Logan had already been foolish enough today, he may as well double down while luck was on his side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The logic of that was so hopelessly faulty that if any of his friends said something like it he might have sat down and cried. For the first time in several years.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Remus,” he called. “How often do people come around here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Besides the Guards?” Remus used a jagged, dirty fingernail to scrape a piece of paint off the edge of a shelf and grinned at the ensuing unfortunate noise. “Basically </span>
  <em>
    <span>never</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I just hang out with myself. And my good friends the cadavers. They sleep in the loft, mostly, except when somebody’s in the mood for cuddling.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear started to laugh, and then clapped his hand over his mouth with an expression of acute betrayal. Remus grinned, peeled off another strip of paint, and sniffed it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Basically never, or properly never?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Like, last time before this was months ago.” Remus paused. One edge of his mouth, pressed into a flat line, jerked downward towards his chin like it had been tugged by a fish hook. “How thick are you? Nobody wants to come here. And nobody who’s desperate enough can.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What about you, then? Why are you here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus looked at him, then. “Killed a man,” he drawled. “Committed treason. Stole state secrets. Cut off the tongue of a fuckin’ fed bastard and fed it back to him. Swiped a loaf of bread.” He scowled and aimed a kick at the edge of the shelf, a muddied hiking boot colliding against the beam with a stilted CLANG. “Take your pick.” CLANG. “Doesn’t fucking matter, anyway.” CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fear,” Logan said, in an undertone. “Go get the car.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear gave him the look that very clearly stated, “I hate you and I have no regard for you as a human being or an authority figure” but he turned toward the direction from whence they had come and stalked off, elbowing Logan in the side of the head on his way out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan ignored this as best he could. He sidled up to Remus, who had given up on kicking the shelf and was now glaring at his foot as though it had murdered a dear friend of his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fucking fed bastards, huh?” Logan said, as casually as he could manage. He had to tip his chin up to look Remus in the eye. The other man’s shoulders were nearly of a length with Logan’s entire height, which was disconcerting and, frankly, unfair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t answer, which was fair, since it wasn’t much of a question. In ordinary times, Logan held strong beliefs in direct, precise inquiries, with no gaps for personal interpretation. Logan’s beliefs rarely aligned with his actions, since times were rarely ordinary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A muscle in Remus’ temple twitched. Logan watched it with a building sense of fulfillment. Tick. Tick. Tick. Just like machinery. It didn’t matter if you understood it, not really— the names of things, the intricacies. If you poked around long enough you could figure out how to make it work for you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. Yeah,” Logan said. “Want to help us out a little more?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus tilted his head. He made a chewing motion with his empty mouth and lolled his head around in a slow, crackling circle. “What’s it pay?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The satisfaction of a job well done,” Logan told him, and smiled.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Fear squinted at the flatbed of the truck with palpable dubiousness. “Not that I don’t have total faith in you and your terrible fucking ideas,” he said, “But I don’t know if this thing is going to survive the trip back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Certainly not if </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> drive,” said Logan dismissively, even though Fear’s fears were terribly founded. The truck was asthmatic on the best of days, and a round trip and an extra load would not help matters. “It’ll be fine, yesterday I adjusted the— Ah. That’s enough, Remus.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, are we done then?” Remus asked. He dropped a final sack of flour onto the top of the already generous pile and stood back to admire his handiwork, lifting the front of his shirt to wipe his sweaty forehead. Fear did a strange thing with his face and stared at a dead tree in the distance. “That was fun.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” said Logan, making a patting gesture in his general direction. Physical contact was always preferable for maximum condescension, but from what he had glimpsed of Remus’ living situation, Logan might have to cut off his hand afterwards.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve never been so stressed in my entire life,” said Fear flatly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan peered at him. He looked exactly the same as usual. “I’m sure we’ve given you worse headaches.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus lifted his arms above his head, twisting his fingers together and stretching languidly so that the muscles in his biceps pulled into taut ropes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Doubtful,” said Fear, still looking at the tree. Logan squinted at it. Had he spotted something? A person? Logan’s stomach dropped. Perhaps there was some kind of secret Guard code involving the positioning of charred trees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you looking at?” Logan asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear turned back towards him and Remus, who was now watching the interaction with interest. Remus raised an eyebrow and broke into a slow, wicked grin, catching his lower lip between his teeth as he did so. Fear’s eyes narrowed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An inexplicably tense staring contest ensued. Logan glanced between the two of them, feeling as though he had missed something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing,” Fear said, ripping himself away and stalking towards the front of the truck. He yanked open the door on the passenger side. His voice sounded normal. “We should get going.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan crossed to the other side of the car so that he was facing Remus, and gave him a firm nod, hands clasped behind his back. “Thank you for not killing us,” he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No problem.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And thank you for your help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No problem,” he repeated. “Sure you don’t care to toss me a couple hundred brillants for all my trouble?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry,” said Logan, and found that he meant it. “Can’t, at present.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus shrugged. “I figured,” he said. “I’m going to ask you for a favor now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear reopened the car door and stuck his head out, scowling. “It was a ‘favor’ that we didn’t bash your fucking head in.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aw, doll, I knew you liked me, deep down,” Remus crooned. Fear flipped him off. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Very</span>
  </em>
  <span> deep down. How deep is up to you!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is obscene and I am a child,” said Logan.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re nineteen,” said Remus. “Anyway.” He sucked in a breath and stuffed his hands in his pockets, suddenly looking more serious and older than he had yet. “I have a brother. He’s about your age, Logic. Seems older, though.” Logan huffed at that. “Name’s Roman. Brown hair, brown eyes, looks a bit like me, I guess. Like, yea high.” He gestured a few inches above the top of Logan’s head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s the least specific description I’ve heard in my life,” Fear called from the front seat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus snorted. “Fuck off, I wasn’t done. Uhhh… let’s see. Wicked scar on his upper arm from when I pushed him into a wall. He was that one kid who snogged his way through his secondary school class, you know the type. Loud, annoying, usually pissed off.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hairstyle? Clothing?” Logan asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remus frowned. “I haven’t seen him in a while, so. I dunno.” He sighed and swept a hand, with some difficulty, through his mane of hair.  “Look, I know it’s a long shot, but just… keep an eye out, alright? If you find him let him know I’m okay. Don’t tell him where I am, though, he’ll try and find me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course,” said Logan, envisioning the world’s endless supply of brown haired, brown eyed, pissed off teeangers. Unless this ‘Roman’ was the type to spew his name around, there was no fucking way they would find him. Still, Logan wasn’t cruel enough to say that, not when Remus was showing unfortunate symptoms of something that might have been emotion. “We’ll keep an eye out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cheers,” Remus said, hesitated, and awkwardly stuck a hand out for a handshake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan thought about that horrifically dirty toothbrush he had seen back in the barn. “No thanks,” he said, and Remus put his hand away, looking relieved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan climbed into the driver's seat of the truck and clicked his seatbelt on. Fear passed him the keys and he stuck them in the ignition and turned them and started to drive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From within the rearview mirror, Remus waved at them, the smirking blot of his reflection growing smaller and smaller until they arced a left, some distance past the sharp edges of the warehouse, and he disappeared.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear’s mouth twitched up at the edge, and then dropped. “His </span>
  <em>
    <span>brother</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Jesus.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What if it’s a trap?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logan thought about it. “I truly cannot fathom how that would be possible.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just cause you can’t fathom it…” Fear started, lip twitching into a smile when Logan flipped him off. Then he seemed to sag, as if all the good humor drained out of him at once. “The bastard’s fucking right, though, we owe him. God. Heart’s gonna go spare.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t have to tell him,” said Logan hopefully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t we?” Fear slumped into his seat and ran a hand over the top of his shaved head, down the slope of his face, and to his chin, dragging his skin into a distorted, open-mouthed grimace. “Why do I feel like this is going to come back and bite us in the ass?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You feel like that about everything,” Logan pointed out. “We shall cross that figurative bridge if we come to it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear laughed, a little. “When did you get so fucking laissez-faire?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When did you get so anxious?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Only around you,” said Fear. He sighed and looked out the side window. Logan looked at the map propped up within the central console and tried to visualise where East was. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, vice versa.” They sat in silence for a while. Fear was staring at the scenery trundling by outside as if searching for something, dark eyes flickering with a watchful light, like a lantern bobbing through the hollows of a wood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s going to be fine,” Logan told him, and marveled the lengths that he had discovered he would go to for Fear, Deceit, and Heart, sort of, though he didn’t really need it, and… well, Prince would eventually flounce and squawk and strong-arm Logan into caring. Optimism, </span>
  <em>
    <span>honestly</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Still, it wasn’t a lie. Not yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know that,” said Fear, but his shoulders were tense, and they didn’t relax until the truck crossed the rickety bridge over the River and into the Rivers— and out of the Nolands. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Fun fact! I've been using the name Janus in this fic since its inception in early April. As soon as the name reveal was imminent, my first thought was, "Fuck I'm going to have to change it in Logical Guide" and then my second thought never came because I passed the fuck away. I can now die intellectually fulfilled.</p><p>If you enjoyed this first chapter, please consider leaving a comment and/or <a href="https://unring-this-bell.tumblr.com/post/618308339160563712/logans-logical-guide-to-political-rebellion">reblogging it on tumblr</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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